Then came Long, and the tea-tray, and little Marianne, and Mrs. Esther was very gracious and sweet, and full of _petits soins_ for Mr. Tremain's comfort, and withal so winsome and so subduedly elated, that Dick Darling--who returned presently with all her volunteers in outrageous spirits--declared she was "the daisyest thing out, and quite too superlatively lovely!" "And how did you find the old salts, Dick?" asked Esther, when every one had been served with tea, and little Marianne was particularly happy, forcing some scalding milk down the luckless throat of "Trim," her _fidus Achates_ in terrier-dog form. "Oh, as fresh as paint, and as delightfully greedy and selfish as it behoves all old men to be. They minutely inspected the 'baccy,' and one of them told me, ''tweren't his sort, but shiver his timbers if he could expect a young leddy ter know the difference atween "old virginny," and "honey dew";' and another one spat rather unpleasantly upon the new silver dollar I gave him, and expressed his rather blasphemous opinion, as to its being a 'Blaine dollar,' and only worth ninety cents! Oh, my dear, they are a most edifying old crew, and their simplicity and naturalness is only worthy of that respectable old party, and his residence, known familiarly as 'Davy Jones's locker.'" "Dick, you are incorrigible!" laughed Mrs. Newbold, and that young lady, on whom the afternoon's expedition seemed to have acted as champagne, began again. "There was one most particularly refreshing old hero; he said he had been all through the civil war, and got his promotion, and his leg bowled off, at Gettysburgh----" "Oh, but I say, Miss Dick," here broke in Freddy Slade, "he couldn't do it, you know, not there, because Gettysburgh was a land battle, and how could your old man-o'-war's man be there?" "He said Gettysburgh, I am perfectly sure he did," answered Dick, "because I quite well remember how he winked at me when he said it, and--yes, I did, I couldn't help it, it must have been capillary attraction, Esther--I winked back at him, and then he spun a tremendous yarn, all about his gory wounds, and bloody hurts; mixed up, you know, with reefing topsails, and belaying mizzen-masts, and setting fore and aft sheets, and rolling in the scuppers, and weltering in his own gore, and piping up the dog-watch, and losing his leg, and fighting for his country, and scoffing at its rewards; and I am sure, yes, very sure, he said it was at Gettysburgh it all happened. But really now, when you come to think of it, things _were_ a little mixed, and I am not responsible for the geography of this country." At this there was another laugh, in which Dick joined, and then in the silence that followed, Marianne's shrill treble made itself heard: "I do quite think with Perkins, mumsey, Miss Dick's the gal for my money!" At which astounding revelation Esther gasped, and the rest of the company fell into renewed shouts of laughter.