I myself should have been jolly proud to get it, but Dr. Fox gave one or two funny coughs, and said again, "What silly fools! I shall have to write and thank them, I suppose. I hate writing letters." I met Mr. Saunderson that day just outside Portsmouth Dockyard, walking along the Hard. He stretched out his huge hand and lifted me half off the ground. I was glad to see him. "Don’t want you to keep the bullets off now, Glover," he said, and took me into the Keppel’s Head and gave me lunch. I went to sea for the next four months in my new ship, the _Royal Oak_, in the Channel Fleet, and when the July promotions came out it was simply fizzing. Captain Helston and the Commander had both been promoted to post-captains, and Mr. Parker of "No. 3" and Mr. Lang of "No. 2" to commanders. Collins, the sub of "No. 3", and Harrington of "No. 1", who had tried to save the stokers when the shell burst her boiler, were made lieutenants, and best of all, down at the bottom of the list was "Noted for Early Promotion", and then followed my name, and Toddles’s and Mellins’s, two more of the _Laird’s_ midshipmen, and three of the _Strong Arm’s_. Dumpling’s name wasn’t there. Ogston, the Assistant Engineer of the _Laird_, had been promoted a few days before. We were all so glad. You can imagine how excited I was, and I had to stand a sardine supper that night down in the _Royal Oak’s_ gun-room. I knew, too, how frightfully delighted they would be at home, and the very next mail brought a fiver from my Pater. Pat Jones happened to have been sent to my ship as one of the quarter-masters, and he was just as delighted as I was, and I tried to make him share the fiver with me, but he wouldn’t. However, I know that the Pater is going to look after him and give him a good billet whenever he leaves the service, so that will be all right. Well, Milly was married in August, up in London, and as the _Royal Oak_ happened to be in Portland I managed to get leave, and went up to see the wedding. It was a jolly grand affair, and there were any number of old friends there. I met Captain Cummins the day before, looking in at a jeweller’s shop in Regent Street, with his hands in his pockets and a toothpick in his mouth. He had such a melancholy, comic-looking expression, and he chuckled, just as he always did when he caught sight of me, and took me into the shop to help him to choose something for Milly. It was a thing she could stick in her hair if she wanted to, or she could divide it in three and fasten it round her neck by a chain, with the big piece under her chin if she wanted to wear it like that. I know he must have given a tremendous amount for it. He gave me lunch at a swagger club, but didn’t talk much. He had just been given command of a ship on the Cape of Good Hope station, and was going to commission her in a week’s time. "Busy laying in a stock of toothpicks, youngster," he chuckled. I think he was rather down in his luck.