Sylvia flushed with a gratification which was twofold in its nature, for here at last seemed an opening of drawing near in heart to that beautiful, baffling personality, who was Jack's sister, and might some day--oh, wonderful thought!--be her own also. It would be a triumph, indeed, if in these days of waiting she could overcome the last lingering prejudice, and feel that there would be no dissentient note when at last the great secret was revealed. Aunt and niece hung together over the case with its precious contents, the one exhausting herself in expressions of gratitude and appreciation, the other equally delighted, but quite unable to resist looking the gift horse in the mouth, and speculating in awed tones concerning the enormous cost of ivory miniatures. That jarred, but on the whole the evening passed more pleasantly than Sylvia could have believed possible, the unexpected excitement breaking the thread of that painful cross- examination, and carrying the old lady's thoughts back to the far-off days when she and her brother had been sworn friends and playmates. "Tell me what you used to do, auntie! It must be so nice to have someone to play with. Do tell me some of your escapades!" she pleaded wistfully, and Miss Munns shook her head, and assumed a great air of disapproval, though it was easy to see that she cherished a secret pride in the remembrance of her own audacities. "I am afraid we were very naughty, thankless children. One day, I remember, Teddy, as we used to call him, had been very rightly punished for disobedience, and he confided in me that he intended to run away, and go to sea, as a cabin-boy. We always did everything together in those days, so of course nothing must suit me but I must go too. We got up early the next morning, and ran out into the garden, where we were allowed to play before breakfast, and then slipped out of the side door, to walk to Portsmouth. "Portsmouth was eighteen miles away, and I was only six, and before we had walked two miles, I was crying with fatigue and hunger. Teddy had brought some bread-and-butter, so we sat under a hedge to eat it, and he told me we must be very nearly there. Just then up came a tramp, and stopped to ask why we were crying, and what we were doing out there in the road at that hour in the morning. `We are going to Portsmouth to be cabin-boys,' we told him, and I can remember to this day how he laughed. `If you are going to be cabin-boys, you won't want those clothes,' he said. `You had better take them off, and give them to me, to change for proper sailor things.'