"Sure you've answered the question yourself!" replied Mrs Gilmour, speaking in her racy brogue. "That's just what I should have had to listen to all the morning but for my thinking of that album, which I'm glad has amused you both, my dears, so well. Ah, children, children, there's nothing like having something to do. I'll tell you something one of the poets, Cowper I think, has written about this in his homely verse:-- "`An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless as it goes as when it stands!' "What d'you think of that, me dears, for an illustration of a person without occupation for mind or body--does the cap fit anybody here, eh?" Bob was silent; but Nellie took the lesson to heart. "Yes, auntie, I know it's true enough," she replied. "I like those lines; papa taught them to me when I was a tiny little girl. I wonder if he learnt them first from you?" "No, dearie," said Mrs Gilmour, drawing her towards her with an affectionate caress. "Our father, your grandpapa that was, taught that little verse to us years ago, when your papa and I were of the same age as Bob and yourself; and I have never forgotten them, as you see, dearie. But, sit down now and have your luncheon. Bob, come to the table; Bob! What on earth are you staring so out of the window now for, I wonder? Bob, I say!" This repetition of his name in a louder key made the delinquent jump; and he turned round in a hurry. CHAPTER EIGHT. "TO-MORROW COME NEVER!" "I really beg your pardon, Aunt Polly, for my inattention!" cried Bob, in a state of great excitement. "It's the Captain!" "Sure, you don't mean that, my dear," said Mrs Gilmour, equally flurried, rising at once from the seat she had just taken at the head of the table. "Is it him, really?" "Oh, yes, auntie," replied Bob, returning to his post of observation in the corner of the window. "There he is coming along the terrace, with Dick at his heels." "Indeed, now?" said Mrs Gilmour, who had come up to Bob's side. "Let me look for meself. Sure and you're right. It's him and none other, and he's coming along at a grand pace, too!" "Hurrah!" shouted Bob. "Isn't it jolly, auntie?" "Very jolly," agreed Mrs Gilmour, more sedately, laughing at Bob's ecstasies, the boy, like most youngsters, being all extremes. "I call it very nice of him, Nell, don't you?" "Delightful!" chimed in Nellie, catching hold of Rover's fore-paws and making him dance round the room with her in high glee, Rover barking to express his sympathy with her excitement. "How good he is--I mean Captain Dresser; not you, Master Doggy!" "It is well we know what you do mean," said her aunt smiling, as Nell and Bob, with Rover dashing madly after their heels rushed into the hall to open the door. "Ah, the young flibberty-gibbets!"