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TOURMALIN'S TIME CHEQUES.
THE PROLOGUE.
On Deck.—Curry and Culture.—Alternative Distractions.—A Period of Probation.—The Oath and the Talisman.—Wavering.—A Chronological Error.—The Time Bargain.—Tourmalin Opens an Account.
Mr. Peter Tourmalin was sitting, or rather lying, in a steamer-chair on the first-class saloon-deck of the P. and O. ship Boomerang, which had not been many days as yet on the voyage home from Sydney. He had been trying to read; but it was a hot morning, and the curry, of which he had partaken freely at breakfast, had made him feel a little heavy and disinclined for mental exertion just then, particularly as Buckle's History of Civilization, the first volume of which he had brought
