When we had emptied our tankards (Billy whispered to me, "Master, did you ever taste such beer?") my aunt said Father would be dying of impatience, so we went out again among the crowd and found them looking with curiosity and amazement at Little John, who sat on the door-step, keeping guard. "Never seed a beast like that," says one; "what is he?" Billy laughed, and said it was a dog, at which they scoffed: and I may say here that it was a long time before the other dogs in our part would own Little John as one of their kind. We got into a carriage waiting for us, and nothing would satisfy some of the young 'prentices but they must unyoke the horses, and drag us the two miles to my uncle's house, and there were the maidservants at the gate (more of them than when I went away), and they waved handkerchiefs or dish-clouts, I don't know which, and Billy's face was redder than ever. I found my uncle sitting in his great chair, with his leg stretched out, and I was not a bit surprised nor hurt when his first words were, "Mind my toe!" and then he cries, "God bless you, Harry, my boy," and flings his arms round me, and kisses me as if I were a child again instead of a tall fellow of near twenty-six. And then he wiped his eyes and said he was an old fool, and catching sight of Billy he wanted to know who that was, and I tried to explain, but somehow the words stuck in my throat, and I couldn't say more than "Billy." "Billy what?" shouts my uncle. "Bobbin, sir," says Billy, and everybody laughed, and laughed again when Billy, looking very much puzzled, said, "Rightly, William, sir." And then James, the graver of my two cousins, said we had better have something to eat, and so we did, my aunt having prepared a feast of fat things fit for kings, as Billy said, and finer by a great deal than I ever had when I was king of Palm Tree Island. On which everybody demanded to know what he meant, and I had to begin my story there and then, and it lasted all through supper and many hours beyond, and even then I had not told the half of it. You may guess how rapt an audience I had, and how they cried out against Wabberley and Chick, and the indignation of my uncle and aunt at their villanous doings; and my admiration of Aunt Susan was vastly increased because she did not turn round upon her husband, as many good women would have done, and beg him to note that she had told him so. When they heard what a close comrade Billy had been to me during those years of solitude and trouble they perfectly overwhelmed him with kind words and praises, and he said to me afterwards that he knew now why my uncle had called his ship the _Lovey Susan_, and he wished he had an Aunt Susan himself, instead of a mother-in-law. [Sidenote: Pleasant Places]