“I believe they could,” said Miss Nugent, gazing at her with admiration, “if he wanted to be turned.”

The ice thus broken, Mr. Hardy spent the following day or two in devising plausible reasons for another visit.  He found one in the person of Mr. Wilks, who, having been unsuccessful in finding his beloved master at a small tavern down by the London docks, had returned to Sunwich, by no means benefited by his change of air, to learn the terrible truth as to his disappearance from Hardy.

“I wish they’d Shanghaid me instead,” he said to that sympathetic listener, “or Mrs. Silk.”

“Eh?” said the other, staring.

“Wot’ll be the end of it I don’t know,” said Mr. Wilks, laying a hand, which still trembled, on the other’ knee.  “It’s got about that she saved my life by ’er careful nussing, and the way she shakes ’er ’ead at me for risking my valuable life, as she calls it, going up to London, gives me the shivers.”

“Nonsense,” said Hardy; “she can’t marry you against your will.  Just be distantly civil to her.”

“’Ow can you be distantly civil when she lives just opposite?” inquired the steward, querulously.  “She sent Teddy over at ten o’clock last night to rub my chest with a bottle o’ liniment, and it’s no good me saying I’m all right when she’s been spending eighteen-pence o’ good money over the stuff.”

“She can’t marry you unless you ask her,” said the comforter.

Mr. Wilks shook his head.  “People in the alley are beginning to talk,” he said, dolefully.  “Just as I came in this afternoon old George Lee screwed up one eye at two or three women wot was gossiping near, and when I asked ’im wot ‘e’d got to wink about he said that a bit o’ wedding-cake ’ad blowed in his eye as I passed.  It sent them silly creeturs into fits a’most.”

[Illustration:  “He said that a bit o’ wedding-cake ’ad blowed in his eye.”]

“They’ll soon get tired of it,” said Hardy.

Mr. Wilks, still gloomy, ventured to doubt it, but cheered up and became almost bright when his visitor announced his intention of trying to smooth over matters for him at Equator Lodge.  He became quite voluble in his defence, and attached much importance to the fact that he had nursed Miss Nugent when she was in long clothes and had taught her to whistle like an angel at the age of five.

“I’ve felt being cut adrift by her more than anything,” he said, brokenly.  “Nine-an’-twenty years I sailed with the cap’n and served ’im faithful, and this is my reward.”

Hardy pleaded his case next day.  Miss Nugent was alone when he called, and, moved by the vivid picture he drew of the old man’s loneliness, accorded her full forgiveness, and decided to pay him a visit at once.  The fact that Hardy had not been in the house five minutes she appeared to have overlooked.

“I’ll go upstairs and put my hat and jacket on and go now,” she said, brightly.