Captain Eliott was immensely amused; he shook with laughter as he walked. But suddenly he stopped laughing. A vague recollection had crossed his mind. Hadn’t he heard it said at the time of the Travancore and Deccan smash that poor Whalley had been cleaned out completely. “Fellow’s hard up, by heavens!” he thought; and at once he cast a sidelong upward glance at his companion. But Captain Whalley was smiling austerely straight before him, with a carriage of the head inconceivable in a penniless man--and he became reassured. Impossible. Could not have lost everything. That ship had been only a hobby of his. And the reflection that a man who had confessed to receiving that very morning a presumably large sum of money was not likely to spring upon him a demand for a small loan put him entirely at his ease again. There had come a long pause in their talk, however, and not knowing how to begin again, he growled out soberly, “We old fellows ought to take a rest now.” “The best thing for some of us would be to die at the oar,” Captain Whalley said negligently. “Come, now. Aren’t you a bit tired by this time of the whole show?” muttered the other sullenly. “Are you?” Captain Eliott was. Infernally tired. He only hung on to his berth so long in order to get his pension on the highest scale before he went home. It would be no better than poverty, anyhow; still, it was the only thing between him and the workhouse. And he had a family. Three girls, as Whalley knew. He gave “Harry, old boy,” to understand that these three girls were a source of the greatest anxiety and worry to him. Enough to drive a man distracted. “Why? What have they been doing now?” asked Captain Whalley with a sort of amused absent-mindedness. “Doing! Doing nothing. That’s just it. Lawn-tennis and silly novels from morning to night. . . .” If one of them at least had been a boy. But all three! And, as ill-luck would have it, there did not seem to be any decent young fellows left in the world. When he looked around in the club he saw only a lot of conceited popinjays too selfish to think of making a good woman happy. Extreme indigence stared him in the face with all that crowd to keep at home. He had cherished the idea of building himself a little house in the country--in Surrey--to end his days in, but he was afraid it was out of the question, . . . and his staring eyes rolled upwards with such a pathetic anxiety that Captain Whalley charitably nodded down at him, restraining a sort of sickening desire to laugh. “You must know what it is yourself, Harry. Girls are the very devil for worry and anxiety.” “Ay! But mine is doing well,” Captain Whalley pronounced slowly, staring to the end of the avenue. The Master-Attendant was glad to hear this. Uncommonly glad. He remembered her well. A pretty girl she was. Captain Whalley, stepping out carelessly, assented as if in a dream. “She was pretty.” The procession of carriages was breaking up.