"You are not looking fat and rosy, Mr. Henry. Fagged with the term: it has been a heavy one. Why don't you do as we are going to do—take a trip over the water?" "To Germany, Sir Simon?" "Germany!—that's your paradise," laughed Sir Simon. "We are going to Boulogne—not much crossing there, you know, which I confess doesn't agree with me. We get over in an hour and a half. You should try it yourself. Good day!" The pony carriage rattled off, and Mr. Henry turned to Mrs. Paradyne's. He had a little matter of business to arrange with her. But matters of business were not always palatable to that lady; and there ensued an unprofitable argument between herself and her visitor. He sat at the table in the little drawing-room, his elbow on it, his thin cheek resting on his two fingers. Mrs. Paradyne, dropping her work, a glove of George's that she was mending, talked at him from the sofa, and in her quiet, persistent way, allowed no reasoning but hers to be heard. Seated near her mother was Mary Paradyne, a bright-looking girl of twenty, with her brother George's great grey eyes. She had come home in June, having left the school in Derbyshire, and was seeking daily teaching near home. A Mrs. Hill, living near Pond Place, was negotiating with her. "Where's George?" asked Mr. Henry, when he at length rose to leave. Mrs. Paradyne would not answer. She was resenting something that Mr. Henry had said. He approached Miss Paradyne to shake hands, but she left her seat and followed him out. "You are right and mamma is wrong," she whispered, with the handle of the closed door in her hand, and the tears gathering in her eyes as she lifted them to his. "Oh, I wish she would not be so unjust to you. George is spending the day at William Gall's." All the answer Mr. Henry made was to bend down and kiss her lips. A very suggestive action, and certainly not discreet. If the boys had but seen! CHAPTER XIV. Over the Water. The fine passenger boat was ploughing its way across the channel, receding from Folkestone, gaining on Boulogne-sur-Mer. Sir Simon Orville and his three nephews were on board. It was a fine, warm, calm day in August; and as Sir Simon Orville sat on the upper deck, steadily as he could have sat in one of his own chairs at home, he thought what a charming passage that was between the two points, and how silly he had been never to have tried it before. For—if the truth must be told—Sir Simon Orville had never made but three water trips in his life: the one to Ramsgate, from London; the other two, the short crossing to the Isle of Wight. He had called them all equally "going to sea;" and as it happened that the water had been very particularly rough on each of the three occasions, and Sir Simon terribly ill, his reminiscences on the subject were not pleasant. To find himself, therefore, gliding along as smoothly as if the channel were a sea of glass, was both unexpected and delightful.