"I have taken bedrooms here for you, Mr. Bale. There is no barrack accommodation, at present, for everyone is back from leave. Any other time, we could have put you up. "Now, if you will point out your baggage, my man will see it taken up to your rooms; and you can come straight on to me. Carrie has got supper ready, and a big fire blazing. It is not three minutes' walk from here." They were soon seated at table and, after the meal was over, they drew round the fire. "So you have really become a man of business, Bob," his sister said. "I was very glad to hear, from your letter, that you liked it better than you expected." "But it will be a long while, yet, before he is a man of business, niece. It is like having a monkey in a china shop. The other day I went down to the cellar, just in time to see him put down a bottle so carelessly that it tumbled over. Unfortunately there was a row of them he had just filled; and a dozen went down, like ninepins. The corks had not been put in, and half the contents were lost before they could be righted. And the wine was worth eighty shillings a dozen." "And what can you expect of him, Mr. Bale?" Gerald O'Halloran said. "Is it a spalpeen like that you would trust with the handling of good wine? I would as soon set a cat to bottle milk." "He is young for it, yet," Mr. Bale agreed. "But when a boy amuses himself by breaking out of school at three o'clock in the morning, and fighting burglars, what are you to do with him?" "I should give him a medal, for his pluck, Mr. Bale; and let him do something where he would have a chance of showing his spirit." "And make him as wild and harum-scarum as you are, yourself, O'Halloran; and then expect him to turn out a respectable merchant, afterwards? I am sure I don't wish to be troubled with him, till he has got rid of what you call his spirits; but what are you to do with such a pickle as this? There have been more bottles broken, since he came, than there ordinarily are in the course of a year; and I suspect him of corrupting my chief clerk, and am in mortal apprehension that he will be getting into some scrape, at Hackney, and make the place too hot for him. "I never gave you credit for much brains, Carrie, but how it was you let your brother grow up like this is more than I can tell." Although this all sounded serious, Bob did not feel at all alarmed. Carrie, however, thought that her uncle was greatly vexed, and tried to take up the cudgels in his defence. "I am sure Bob does not mean any harm, uncle." "I did not say that he did, niece; but if he does harm, it comes to the same thing. "Well, we need not talk about that now. So I hear that you are going out to the Mediterranean?" "Yes, uncle, to Gibraltar. It is a nice station, everyone says, and I am very pleased. There are so many places where there is fighting going on, now, that I think we are most fortunate in going there. I was so afraid the regiment might be sent either to America, or India."