Mr. O'Donovan's face lighted up at once with a genial smile of friendly recognition. 'George Wroe's daughter!' he cried, with much animation. 'George Wroe's daughter! Why, this is really most providential, my dear. God bless my soul, we don't need any introduction to one another. I knew your father well: many's the time we've been out fishing for whiting pollock on the Swale Daze together; a fine young fellow as ever lived, my dear, your father. When you see him again--he's living, I trust--that's well; I'm glad to hear it--whenever you see him again, my child, just you ask him whether he remembers Con O'Donovan (that's my name, you see, Cornelius; fifty years ago they used to call me Con O'Donovan). And just you ask him, too, whether he remembers how we got chased by the revenue cutter from Portland Roads mistaking us for the gig of the French smack, that brought over brandy (smuggled, I'm sorry to say--ah, dear me, dear me!) to tranship into old Gingery Radford's “Lively Sally “; and how we ran, and the cutter chased us, and we put on all sail, and made for Golden Cap, and the cutter went fifteen miles out of her way bearing down upon us, and caught us at last, and overhauled us, and found after all we'd nothing aboard but a small cargo of lob-worms and launces! Ah, bless my soul, that was a splendid run, that was! Oh, ho, ho! a splendid run, that one!' and Mr. O'Donovan laughed to himself a big, gentle, good-humoured laugh at the recollection of the boisterous jokes of fifty years ago, and of the captain of the cutter, who swore at them most terribly, in a varied and extensive assortment of English profanity, after the fashion of the United Service at the beginning of the present century. 'And now, my dear,' he went on, after another short pause--'I won't call you Miss Wroe any longer, if you're my old friend Geargey's daughter--excuse our plain old Dorsetshire dialect. So you want to be a governess? Well, well, tell me all about it, now. How did it all happen?'