[Illustration:  “Mr. Wilks replied that he was biding his time.”]

An excellent reason for absenting himself from school was thus denied to Master Hardy; but it has been well said that when one door closes another opens, and to his great satisfaction the old servant, who had been in poor health for some time, suddenly took to her bed and required his undivided attention.

He treated her at first with patent medicines purchased at the chemist’s, a doctor being regarded by both of them as a piece of unnecessary extravagance; but in spite of four infallible remedies she got steadily worse.  Then a doctor was called in, and by the time Captain Hardy returned home she had made a partial recovery, but was clearly incapable of further work.  She left in a cab to accept a home with a niece, leaving the captain confronted with a problem which he had seen growing for some time past.

“I can’t make up my mind what to do with you,” he observed, regarding his son.

“I’m very comfortable,” was the reply.

“You’re too comfortable,” said his father.

You’re running wild.  It’s just as well poor old Martha has gone; it has brought things to a head.”

“We could have somebody else,” suggested his son.

The captain shook his head.  “I’ll give up the house and send you to London to your Aunt Mary,” he said, slowly; “she doesn’t know you, and once I’m at sea and the house given up, she won’t be able to send you back.”

Master Hardy, who was much averse to leaving Sunwich and had heard accounts of the lady in question which referred principally to her strength of mind, made tender inquiries concerning his father’s comfort while ashore.

“I’ll take rooms,” was the reply, “and I shall spend as much time as I can with you in London.  You want looking after, my son; I’ve heard all about you.”

His son, without inquiring as to the nature of the information, denied it at once upon principle; he also alluded darkly to his education, and shook his head over the effects of a change at such a critical period of his existence.

“And you talk too much for your age,” was his father’s comment when he had finished.  “A year or two with your aunt ought to make a nice boy of you; there’s plenty of room for improvement.”

He put his plans in hand at once, and a week before he sailed again had disposed of the house.  Some of the furniture he kept for himself; but the bulk of it went to his sister as conscience-money.

Master Hardy, in very low spirits, watched it taken away.  Big men in hob-nailed boots ran noisily up the bare stairs, and came down slowly, steering large pieces of furniture through narrow passages, and using much vain repetition when they found their hands acting as fenders.  The wardrobe, a piece of furniture which had been built for larger premises, was a particularly hard nut to crack, but they succeeded at last—­in three places.