"Well, I'm glad to hear that at all events," retorted his questioner in rather an injudicial way. "Sure, I didn't think you had one at all, not having seen it after all your talking about it. What sort of a yacht is it, now?" "Only a half-decked little cutter of about two or three tons," answered the Captain abjectly, trying to minimise his offence. "A very little one, ma'am, I assure you." Mrs Gilmour burst into a fit of laughter, in which they all joined heartily; the barrister's jovial roar being heard above the music of the band. "Ah, no wonder you didn't like my seeing it!" she cried with pleasant irony, which, however, made the old sailor wince, this "yacht" of his being a subject on which he was wont to enlarge amongst his friends. "Why, from what you said, I thought she was a big schooner like the one that took the cup at Cowes last year when we all went over with those horrid Tomkinses to see the regatta! Call that a yacht, a boat of such a size? I call it a cockleshell!" This nettled the Captain very considerably, it must be confessed. "Well, ma'am, you may call it what you please," he replied shortly, with some little heat, putting on his hat again and jamming it down on his head firmly, using a good deal of force as if expending in that way his latent caloric. "But, cockleshell or no cockleshell, she's big enough for me!" "But, Captain dear, isn't there room enough for me, too?" asked Nell coaxingly, seeing that he was vexed, and sliding her little hand into his, as if to show that she at all events was not joining in the fun against him. "Won't you take Bob and me?" Her touch somehow or, other banished his pettishness, enabling him to see that Mrs Gilmour was only joking, and that he had but played into her hands, as he said to himself, by losing his temper over it. "I tell you what," he now exclaimed, without a single trace of ill- humour. "You shall see that I'm not ashamed of my little craft, for I'll have the _Zephyr_ brought over from Gosport to-morrow. What is more, too, the whole lot of you shall go out for a sail in her--by Jove!" The Captain was as good as his word, the yacht being towed across the following afternoon from Haslar Creek, where she had been lying, ever since the last yachting season, on the mud flats that there exist. The little craft, which was a dapper cutter with an oyster-knife sort of bow and a clean run aft, as if she could race well when heeling over and show a good deal of her copper sheathing, did not exceed the tonnage mentioned by the Captain. But, in spite of her smallness of size, she appeared to have the making of a good sea boat in her, and gained many admirers amongst the Southsea watermen as they surveyed her at her new moorings; the little craft being anchored off the coastguard-station and placed now under the charge of Hellyer, when the Captain was not immediately looking after her himself.