He usually met the postman when he was keeping his watch on deck--beneath the little bay-window--and if there was a letter for Eve, he would pause in front of the house, and hand it through the open sash. He did this one morning after they had been in the lodgings a month, and he had not added two turns to the regulation forty before Eve called to him. He bustled in at the door, hung his old straw hat on a peg, which was likewise too high, and went into the little parlour. As he was smoking, he stood in the doorway, for he had not yet got over his immense respect for the niece who was above him. "Yes, dearie?" he said. "What to do now?" Eve was standing near the window, holding a letter in her hand. "Listen!" she said, and spreading out her elbows she read grandly-- "'MADAM,--I like your Spanish Notes and Sketches; but I cannot put in number one until I see number two. Send me more, or, better still, if convenient, when you are next in town, do me the honour of calling here.--Yours very truly--' "Now listen, uncle." "Yes, dear!" "'Yours very truly, "'JOHN CRAIK.'" "Lor!" ejaculated Captain Bontnor, "the gentleman that writes." Eve handed him the letter, which he held, awestruck, with the tip of his thumb and finger. "He doesn't write very well--he, he!" he added, with a chuckle. "I'm afraid it's no good my trying to read it without my glasses." He blinked at the crabbed spidery caligraphy, and handed the letter back. "It is signed John Craik, but Providence held the pen," said Eve. "If this letter had not come I should have had to leave you, uncle. I should have had to go and be a governess. And I do not want to leave you." The old man's eyes filled suddenly, as old eyes sometimes will. He stuffed his pipe into his pocket and took her two hands in his, patting them tenderly. He did not speak for some time, but stood blinking back the tears. "Then God bless John Craik!" he said. "God bless him." They sat down to talk this thing over, forgetful of the captain's pipe, which burnt a hole in the lining of his coat. There was so much to be discussed. Eve had written a certain number of short essays--painfully conscious all the while of their simplicity and faultiness. She did not know that so long as a person has his subject at his finger-ends, simplicity is rather to be commended than otherwise. It is the half-informed who are verbose. She had written simply of the simple life which she knew so well. She had depicted Spanish daily life from the keenly instinctive standpoint of a woman's observation; and only a week before she had sent a single essay--marked number one--to the editor of the Commentator, John Craik.