"Well, if you'll name that you'll name anything. Ate too much indeed! Do you think I was going to pay for a dinner, and eat nothing? No, Mr. Caudle; it's a good thing for you that I know a little more of the value of money than that. "But, of course, you were better engaged than in attending to me. Mr. Prettyman came on board at Gravesend. A planned thing, of course. You think I didn't see him give you a letter. "IT WASN'T A LETTER; IT WAS A NEWSPAPER? "I daresay; ill as I was, I had my eyes. It was the smallest newspaper I ever saw, that's all. But of course, a letter from Miss Prettyman--Now, Caudle, if you begin to cry out in that manner, I'll get up. Do you forget that you are not at your own house? making that noise! Disturbing everybody! Why, we shall have the landlord up! And you could smoke and drink 'forward,' as you called it. What? "YOU COULDN'T SMOKE ANYWHERE ELSE? "That's nothing to do with it. Yes; forward. What a pity that Miss Prettyman wasn't with you! I'm sure nothing could be too forward for her. No, I won't hold my tongue; and I ought not to be ashamed of myself. It isn't treason, is it, to speak of Miss Prettyman? After all I've suffered to-day, and I'm not to open my lips! Yes; I'm to be brought away from my own home, dragged down here to the sea-side, and made ill! and I'm not to speak. I should like to know what next. "It's a mercy some of the dear children were not drowned; not that their father would have cared, so long as he could have had his brandy and cigars. Peter was as near through one of the holes as - "IT'S NO SUCH THING? "It's very well for you to say so, but you know what an inquisitive boy he is, and how he likes to wander among steam-engines. No, I won't let you sleep. What a man you are! What? "I'VE SAID THAT BEFORE? "That's no matter; I'll say it again. Go to sleep, indeed! as if one could never have a little rational conversation. No, I sha'n't be too late for the Margate boat in the morning; I can wake up at what hour I like, and you ought to know that by this time. "A miserable creature they must have thought me in the ladies' cabin, with nobody coming down to see how I was. "YOU CAME A DOZEN TIMES? "No, Caudle, that won't do. I know better. You never came at all. Oh, no! cigars and brandy took all your attention. And when I was so ill, that I didn't know a single thing that was going on about me, and you never came. Every other woman's husband was there--ha! twenty times. And what must have been my feelings to hear 'em tapping at the door, and making all sorts of kind inquiries-- something like husbands and I was left to be ill alone? Yes; and you want to get me into an argument. You want to know, if I was so ill that I knew nothing, how could I know that you didn't come to the cabin-door? That's just like your aggravating way; but I'm not to be caught in that manner, Caudle. No."