“How d’e do, Mr Tregaskis,” said Captain Tobias, shaking hands.  He knew the mate of the Hannah Hoo, and respected him for a capable seaman.  “I hope I see you well, ma’am?”

“Nicely, sir, thank you!” Mrs Tregaskis curtseyed and beamed.

But Captain Tobias, though with her, too, he shook hands politely enough, was plainly preoccupied. “’Tis a wonderful invention,” said he.  “You just let the gas run in, an’ then it is ready for use at any time.  I hadn’t a notion you was so up-to-date here.”

Mr Tregaskis looked puzzled.  “It don’t work by gas.  You wind it up with a cog arrangement, which acts on a spring coil, I’m told—­just like the inside of a watch.  But we can see by liftin’ up the lid.”

“Eh?” Captain Tobias glanced back over his shoulder.

“But as I was tellin’ the boss, ’twas never intended for a country walk.  You sets it down at home and calls for a tune—­as it might be drinks,” continued Mr Tregaskis lucidly.

Captain Cai touched his friend’s elbow.  “You’re talkin’ o’ different things, you two,” he explained in a nervous haste, anxious to get off delicate ground.  “Tregaskis was alludin’ to—­er—­this here; which” he concluded, “nobody could have been more taken aback than I was this mornin’ . . . when it happened.”

“You don’t say that’s the musical box!” cried Mrs Tregaskis.  “Now, don’t you agree, sir”—­she appealed to Captain Tobias—­“with what I said to William at dinner-time, when he told me about the presentation and the speeches? [Here Captain Cai shot a look at his mate, who flushed but kept his eyes averted, pretending carelessness.] I said that for a lot of ignorant seamen ‘twas quite a happy thought, an’ nobody could say as Captain Hocken didn’ deserve it; but, the thing bein’ bought in such a hurry—­an’ knowin’ William as I do—­ten to one he’d been taken in an’ the thing wouldn’t work when it came to be tried.”

“I told you,” put in her spouse, “as the salesman had shown us how to work it, an’ it played the most life-like tunes, ‘Home Sweet Home’ inclooded.”

“The salesman!” said Mrs Tregaskis scornfully.  “A long way you’ll go in the world if you trust a salesman!  Why, there was a young man once in Harris’s Drapery showed me a bonnet—­with humming-birds—­perfectly outrageous; I wouldn’ ha’ been seen in it; and inside o’ five minutes he had me there with the tears in my eyes to think I couldn’ afford it.”

“It works all right indeed, ma’am,” Captain Cai assured her.

“Ah, maybe you’re cleverer with machinery than William?  I don’t know how you find him at sea, but I can’t trust him to wind the clock.”

“I didn’ set it goin’ myself, ma’am; not personally.”

“Well,” sighed Mrs Tregaskis, “I wish William had consulted me, anyway, before buying the thing in such a hurry.  It’s shop-soiled, he has to admit; which I only hope you’ll overlook.”