“To think of that fellow,” my dear uncle grumbled, all the way to Shepperton, “owning half a dozen boats, and calling one of them the _Duchess_! Why, I gave him an old pair of breeches once, that he might not be had up for indecency. And now he calls my nephew, ‘Mr. What’s your name!’ Do you know who his wife was? No, of course you don’t. But I do. Why, she was in the stoke-holes at old Steers’,’ the pineapple grower at Teddington. And no one knew whether she was a boy or a girl, with a sack and four holes in it, for her arms and legs. But what a lot of money they made then! He sold all his pines at five guineas apiece to George the Fourth, and sometimes he got the money. Ah, there will never be such days again. You must scrimp and scrape, and load back from the mews, and pay a shilling, where they used to pay you to take it. But here we are! Let him try his tricks with me.” Unluckily my uncle got no chance of terrifying Mr. Moggs, as he intended. We landed at a very pretty slab-faced cottage, covered with vines and Virginia creepers, and my uncle began to shout—“Moggs, Phil Moggs!” quite as if he were a Thames Commissioner. But no Moggs answered, nor did any one appear, till my uncle seized a boat-hook, and thundered at the door. Then a very respectable-looking woman, with a pleasant face and fine silver hair, came and asked who we were, and showed us in. She seemed to know my uncle very well, though he was not at all certain about her. “Is it possible, ma’am, after all these years,” he began in his best manner, “that I see the young lady I once had the pleasure of knowing as Miss Drudger?” “You see the old woman, who was once that girl,” she answered, as she offered him a chair; “ah, those indeed were pleasant days!” I thought of the stoke-hole, and could well have believed that my uncle had been romancing, if I had ever known him capable of that process. But she very soon reassured me. “I worked hard then, and I had no worries. But I have known plenty of care since then. I suppose you came to see my husband, sir. Is there any business I can do? He started for his holiday this morning. The doctor has been ordering him change of air; and at last I persuaded him to go. He is gone for a month or so, to Southsea. We have a daughter there doing very well indeed. She is married to a large boat-builder. My eldest son George sees to everything here, now his father has taken him partner. But I keep the books, and can take any order, just as if Mr. Moggs was at home.” It seemed rather strange that she should speak like this, quite as if she expected some inquiry. I looked at my uncle and saw that the same idea was passing through his mind. “Thank you, Mrs. Moggs,” he said, as if he wanted time to think; “I fear that we must not trouble you. But are you in the habit of entering orders?”