She sniffed gently, and, wiping one eye at a time, kept the disengaged one charged with sisterly solicitude upon her brother.  The captain, with steadily rising anger, endured this game of one-eyed bo-peep for five minutes; then he rose and, muttering strange things in his beard, stalked upstairs to his room.

Mrs. Kingdom, thus forsaken, dried her eyes and resumed her work.  The remainder of the family were in the kitchen ministering to the wants of a misunderstood steward, and, in return, extracting information which should render them independent of the captain’s version.

“Was it very solemn, Sam?” inquired Miss Nugent, aged nine, who was sitting on the kitchen table.

Mr. Wilks used his hands and eyebrows to indicate the solemnity of the occasion.

“They even made the cap’n leave off speaking,” he said, in an awed voice.

“I should have liked to have been there,” said Master Nugent, dutifully.

“Ann,” said Miss Nugent, “go and draw Sam a jug of beer.”

“Beer, Miss?” said Ann.

“A jug of beer,” repeated Miss Nugent, peremptorily.

Ann took a jug from the dresser, and Mr. Wilks, who was watching her, coughed helplessly.  His perturbation attracted the attention of his hostess, and, looking round for the cause, she was just in time to see Ann disappearing into the larder with a cream jug.

[Illustration:  “His perturbation attracted the attention of his hostess.”]

“The big jug, Ann,” she said, impatiently; “you ought to know Sam would like a big one.”

Ann changed the jugs, and, ignoring a mild triumph in Mr. Wilks’s eye, returned to the larder, whence ensued a musical trickling.  Then Miss Nugent, raising the jug with some difficulty, poured out a tumbler for the steward with her own fair hands.

“Sam likes beer,” she said, speaking generally.

“I knew that the first time I see him, Miss,” re-marked the vindictive Ann.

Mr. Wilks drained his glass and set it down on the table again, making a feeble gesture of repulse as Miss Nugent refilled it.

“Go on, Sam,” she said, with kindly encouragement; “how much does this jug hold, Jack?”

“Quart,” replied her brother.

“How many quarts are there in a gallon?”

“Four.”

Miss Nugent looked troubled.  “I heard father say he drinks gallons a day,” she remarked; “you’d better fill all the jugs, Ann.”

“It was only ‘is way o’ speaking,” said Mr. Wilks, hurriedly; “the cap’n is like that sometimes.”

“I knew a man once, Miss,” said Ann, “as used to prefer to ’ave it in a wash-hand basin.  Odd, ugly-looking man ’e was; like Mr. Wilks in the face, only better-looking.”

Mr. Wilks sat upright and, in the mental struggle involved in taking in this insult in all its ramifications, did not notice until too late that Miss Nugent had filled his glass again.