“She was indeed, dear.  But when I say that I think that Harold is not happy I mean in his daily life.  Has it never struck you how thoughtful, he is at times, and how absent-minded?”

“In love perhaps, the young dog.  He seems to have found snug moorings now at any rate.”

“I think that it is very likely that you are right, Willy,” answered the mother seriously.  “But with which of them?”

“I cannot tell.”

“Well, they are very charming girls, both of them.  But as long as he hangs in the wind between the two it cannot be serious.  After all, the boy is four-and-twenty, and he made five hundred pounds last year.  He is better able to marry than I was when I was lieutenant.”

“I think that we can see which it is now,” remarked the observant mother.  Charles Westmacott had ceased to knock the tennis balls about, and was chatting with Clara Walker, while Ida and Harold Denver were still talking by the railing with little outbursts of laughter.  Presently a fresh set was formed, and Doctor Walker, the odd man out, came through the wicket gate and strolled up the garden walk.

“Good evening, Mrs. Hay Denver,” said he, raising his broad straw hat.  “May I come in?”

“Good evening, Doctor!  Pray do!”

“Try one of these,” said the Admiral, holding out his cigar-case.  “They are not bad.  I got them on the Mosquito Coast.  I was thinking of signaling to you, but you seemed so very happy out there.”

“Mrs. Westmacott is a very clever woman,” said the Doctor, lighting the cigar.  “By the way, you spoke about the Mosquito Coast just now.  Did you see much of the Hyla when you were out there?”

“No such name on the list,” answered the seaman, with decision.  “There’s the Hydra, a harbor defense turret-ship, but she never leaves the home waters.”

The Doctor laughed.  “We live in two separate worlds,” said he.  “The Hyla is the little green tree frog, and Beale has founded some of his views on protoplasm upon the appearancer, of its nerve cells.  It is a subject in which I take an interest.”

“There were vermin of all sorts in the woods.  When I have been on river service I have heard it at night like the engine-room when you are on the measured mile.  You can’t sleep for the piping, and croaking, and chirping.  Great Scott! what a woman that is!  She was across the lawn in three jumps.  She would have made a captain of the foretop in the old days.”

“She is a very remarkable woman.”

“A very cranky one.”

“A very sensible one in some things,” remarked Mrs. Hay Denver.

“Look at that now!” cried the Admiral, with a lunge of his forefinger at the Doctor.  “You mark my words, Walker, if we don’t look out that woman will raise a mutiny with her preaching.  Here’s my wife disaffected already, and your girls will be no better.  We must combine, man, or there’s an end of all discipline.”