'I did so wish to speak a few words to you, Gertrude,' said Norman; 'but it seems as though, now that this captain has come among us, all our old habits and ways are to be upset.' 'I don't see that _you_ need say that,' said she. 'We may, perhaps, be put out a little--that is, mamma and Linda and I; but I do not see that you need suffer.' 'Suffer--no, not suffer--and yet it is suffering.' 'What is suffering?' said she. 'Why, to be as we were last night--not able to speak to each other.' 'Come, Harry, you should be a little reasonable,' said she, laughing. 'If you did not talk last night whose fault was it?' 'I suppose you will say it was my own. Perhaps it was. But I could not feel comfortable while he was drinking gin-and-water--' 'It was rum,' said Gertrude, rather gravely. 'Well, rum-and-water in your mother's drawing-room, and cursing and swearing before you and Linda, as though he were in the cockpit of a man-of-war.' 'Alaric you saw was able to make himself happy, and I am sure he is not more indifferent to us than you are.' 'Alaric seemed to me to be bent on making a fool of the old man; and, to tell the truth, I cannot approve of his doing so.' 'It seems to me, Harry, that you do not approve of what any of us are doing,' said she; 'I fear we are all in your black books--Captain Cuttwater, and mamma, and Alaric, and I, and all of us.' 'Well now, Gertrude, do you mean to say you think it right that Katie should sit by and hear a man talk as Captain Cuttwater talked last night? Do you mean to say that the scene which passed, with the rum and the curses, and the absurd ridicule which was thrown on your mother's uncle, was such as should take place in your mother's drawing-room?' 'I mean to say, Harry, that my mother is the best and only judge of what should, and what should not, take place there.' Norman felt himself somewhat silenced by this, and walked on for a time without speaking. He was a little too apt to take upon himself the character of Mentor; and, strange to say, he was aware of his own fault in this particular. Thus, though the temptation to preach was very powerful, he refrained himself for a while. His present desire was to say soft things rather than sharp words; and though lecturing was at this moment much easier to him than love-making, he bethought himself of his object, and controlled the spirit of morality which was strong within him. 'But we were so happy before your uncle came,' he said, speaking with his sweetest voice, and looking at the beautiful girl beside him with all the love he was able to throw into his handsome face. 'And we are happy now that he has come--or at any rate ought to be,' said Gertrude, doing a little in the Mentor line herself, now that the occasion came in her way. 'Ah! Gertrude, you know very well there is only one thing can make me happy,' said Harry.