"Aunt Polly" and Nellie were both ready and waiting for them outside, dressed in walking attire; while Rover was frisking round the ladies, though he darted up to his young master the moment he caught sight of him, forgetting, with all a good dog's magnanimity, the ill-treatment he had received in not being allowed to accompany him to the dockyard. "Sure, you're very late, Captain dear," began Mrs Gilmour when the old sailor came near, with Dick following in his wake; but, suddenly noticing the latter's wonderful transformation of appearance, she stopped her laughing reproaches anent the Captain's dilatoriness, exclaiming in admiring tones--"My good gracious! Dear me! Who is this young gentleman?" Bob was in ecstasies. "We were sure you wouldn't know him, auntie!" he cried, as little Miss Nellie joined him in a gleesome dance of triumph round the blushing, new-fledged Dick, and Rover gambolled behind the pair, barking loudly, in sympathetic accord. "We were sure you wouldn't know him!" "Sure, you're right, me dears, I wouldn't really have recognised him for the same boy at all, at all!" cheerfully agreed Mrs Gilmour, as she turned towards the ex-runaway and scrutinising his altered guise in detail, critically but kindly. "Are ye, really, Dick, now?" "Yes, mum, I bees the same b'y, surely," replied Dick, with a broad grin that spread over his face from ear to ear. "It's the Cap'en, God bless him, mum, as made me for to look so foine that my own mother wouldn't know me, leastways nobody else--thanks be to the Cap'en, mum." "Pooh, pooh, there's nothing to make a fuss about," interposed the old sailor, anxious to let these personalities be dropped, being very shy of any of his good actions being noticed. "The boy's all right. He has only changed his rig, that's all, the same as you put on a new dress on going out walking, ma'am." "That's a nice thing to say of an economical person like me, sir!" said Mrs Gilmour, shaking her parasol at him in jocular anger. "One would think I was one of those fine ladies who have a new dress every day in the week, and milliners' bills as long as your old malacca cane." "Well, well, I apologise, ma'am, for I know better than that, as you are far too sensible a woman to spend all your money on finery," said the Captain, with a low bow. "But where are we going to now, for I see you are dressed for walking?" "Down to the sea, of course," she replied. "Nell and I went up to Landport this morning, while you and Bob were `transmogrifying' that boy, as my old father used to say. We paid a visit to the old lady whose eggs were broken yesterday by Master Rover's gambols. You may remember, Captain, I promised her some from my own fowls in place of those she lost. Don't you recollect how anxious the poor creature was about them?" "Yes, yes, I remember," said the old sailor, his face beaming with good- humour. "You're always kind and thoughtful."