“Ah! he was in the Royal Navy.  But this is a merchantman; you don’t think he will presume to break into the monopoly of the superior branch.  He will only swear by the wind and weather.  Thunder and squalls!  Donner and blitzen!  Handspikes and halyards! these are the innocent execrations of the merchant service—­he! he! ho!”

“Uncle, can you be serious?” asked Lucy, somewhat coldly; “if so, be so good as to tell me, is this gentleman—­a—­gentleman?”

“Well,” replied the other, coolly, “he is what I call a nondescript; like an attorney, or a surgeon, or a civil engineer, or a banker, or a stock-broker, and all that sort of people.  He can be a gentleman if he is thoroughly bent on it; you would in his place, and so should I; but these skippers don’t turn their mind that way.  Old families don’t go into the merchant service.  Indeed, it would not answer.  There they rise by—­by—­mere maritime considerations.”

“Then, uncle,” began Lucy, with dignified severity, “permit me to say that, in inviting a nondescript, you showed—­less consideration for me than—­you—­are in the habit—­of doing, dearest.”

“Well, have a headache, and can’t come down.”

“So I certainly should; but, most unfortunately, I have an objection to tell fibs on a Sunday.”

“You are quite right; we should rest from our usual employments one day-ha! ha! and so go at it fresher to-morrow—­haw! ho!  Come, Lucy, don’t you be so exclusive.  Eve Dodd is a merry girl.  She comes and amuses me when you are not here, and David, by all accounts, is a fine young fellow, and as modest as a girl of fifteen; they will make me laugh, especially Eve, and it would be hard at my age, I think, if I might not ask whom I like—­to tea.”

“So it would,” put in Lucy, hastily; she added, coaxing, “it shall have its own way—­it shall have what makes it laugh.”

Long before eight o’clock the Fountains had forgotten that they had invited the Dodds.

Not so Eve.  She was all in a flutter, and hesitated between two dresses, and by some blessed inspiration decided for the plainest; but her principal anxiety was, not about herself, but about David’s deportment before the Queen of Fashion, for such report proclaimed Miss Fountain.  “And those fine ladies are so satirical,” said Eve to herself; “but I will lecture him going along.”

Dinner time, and, by consequence, tea time, came earlier in those days; so, about eight o’clock, a tall, square-shouldered young fellow was walking in the moonlight toward Font Abbey, Eve holding his hand, and tripping by his side, and lecturing him on deportment very gravely while dancing around him and pulling him all manner of ways, like your solid tune with your gamboling accompaniment, a combination now in vogue.  All of a sudden, without with your leave or by your leave, the said David caught this light fantastic object up in his arms, and carried it on one shoulder.