When all was ready--the glazed chicken, the juicy slices of pink ham, the wedge of rich Stilton, the bottle of English ale--I returned again to my unconscious spouse. It was ten o'clock, and he had been sleeping with all his might for seven hours. Surely that was enough! Especially as he still had the whole night before him. I stroked his hair--I kissed his forehead--I kissed his shut eyes. He can resist everything but that; when I kiss his eyes he is obliged to stir and murmur and want kisses for his lips. He stirred now, and turned up his dear old face. "Pol----" "Yes, darling, it's me. Are you awake?" He sighed luxuriously. "Tommy, _are_ you awake?" "Wha's th' time?" "It's _awfully_ late. Come, you won't sleep to-night if you don't get up now." "Oh, sha'n't I? I could sleep for a week if I had the chance. Ah-hi-ow!" He yawned like a drowsy lion. "I'd sooner have twenty gales than one fog, Polly." "I know you would. But never mind about gales and fogs and trivial things of that kind. I've something far, far more important to talk to you about--something that will make your very hair stand on end with astonishment. Only I want to be quite sure first that you are awake enough to take it in." He called his faculties together in a moment as if I had been the look-out man reporting breakers, and was all alive and alert to deal summarily with the situation, whatever it might be. And I rushed upon my story, showed him the letter and the draft, and poured out a jumbled catalogue of all the things we could now do that wanted doing--beginning with a leaking kettle and ending with his professional appointment, which I had decided must be resigned forthwith. "And we will live together always and always, like other husbands and wives, only that we shall be a thousand times happier," I concluded, as I led him in to his supper, hanging on his arm. "No more fogs and gales, to wear you out and perhaps drown you in the end, but your bed every night, and your armchair by the fire, your home and family, and me--_me_----" "Little woman! But you mustn't forget, pet, that I'm not thirty-eight till next birthday. A man can't give up work and sink into armchairs at that age." "Of course he can't. We can find some nice post ashore. There are plenty of things, if you look for them." "Not for sailor men, who know nothing but their trade." "Oh, heaps--any amount of heaps! And you can take your time, of course. No need to hurry for a year or two. You want a long holiday. You have never had one yet. And _I_ want _you_. What's the use of money, if we can't enjoy it together? We have not had so much as one whole month to ourselves since we were married." "Well, a sailor's wife must accept the conditions, you know." "Yes, when necessary. But it is not necessary now that we are people of independent means." "Three hundred a year isn't three thousand. And we've got to educate the kids, and put by for them."