"Thank you, professor. Good-night!" reiterated Ishmael, scarcely able to restrain his laughter. "Good-night, sir. And there's some--well, I see you're laughing at me." "No, no, professor! or, if I was, it was in sympathy and pleasure; not in derision--Heaven forbid! Your boyish interest in this voyage is really charming to me, professor. But you must retire, old friend; indeed you must. You know we will have plenty of time to look over these things when we get on board the steamer," said Ishmael, taking the old man's hand, cordially shaking it, and resolutely dismissing him to rest. And Ishmael himself retired to bed and to sleep, and being very much fatigued with his long ride, he slept soundly until morning. Though the professor was too much excited by the thoughts of his voyage to sleep much, yet he was up with the earliest dawn of morning, moving about softly in his master's room, strapping down the trunks and laying out traveling clothes and toilet apparatus. The kind old maiden ladies also bestirred themselves earlier than usual this morning, that their young favorite should enjoy one more comfortable breakfast before he left. And so when Ishmael was dressed and had just dispatched the professor to the stand to engage a hack to take them to the station, and while he was thinking of nothing better in the way of a morning meal than the weak, muddy coffee and questionable bread and butter of the railway restaurant, he received a summons to the dining room, where he found his two hostesses presiding over a breakfast of Mocha coffee, hot rolls, buckwheat cakes, poached eggs, broiled salmon, stewed oysters, and roast partridges. Our young man had a fine healthy appetite of his own, and could enjoy this repast as well as any epicure alive; but better than all to his affectionate heart was the motherly kindness that had brought these two delicate old ladies out of their beds at this early hour to give him a breakfast. They had their reward in seeing how heartily he ate. There was no one at the table but himself and themselves; and they pressed the food upon him, reminding him how long a journey he would have to make before he could sit down to another comfortable meal. And when Ishmael had breakfasted and thanked them, and returned to his rooms to tie up some last little parcels, they called in the professor, who had now come back, and they plied him with all the luxuries on the breakfast table. And when to their great satisfaction the old man had made an astonishing meal and risen from the table, they beckoned him mysteriously aside and gave a well-filled hamper into his charge, saying: