the privacy of their apartments, while they ate and drank of the choicest during their seclusion.
But this unacknowledged partiality was a bone of contention between his sweetheart's aunt and Slap-Jack. The latter prided himself especially on being what he termed True-Blue, holding in great abhorrence everything connected with Rome, St. Germains, and the Jacobite party. He allowed of no saints in the calendar except Lady Hamilton, whom he excepted from his denunciations by some reasoning process of his own which it is needless to follow out. Nevertheless Alice knew right well that such an argument as now seemed imminent was the sure forerunner of a storm. "Aunt," said she softly, "I've looked out all the table linen, and done my washing-up till supper-time. If you want nothing particular, I'll run out and get a breath of fresh air off the moor before it gets dark."
"And it's time for me to be off, Aunt Dodge!" exclaimed Slap-Jack, as Alice knew full well he would. "Bless ye, we shall beat to quarters at the Hill, now in less than half an hour, and being a warrant-officer, as you may say, o' course it's for me to set a good example to the ship's company. Fare ye well, Mrs. Dodge, and give the priest a wide berth, if he comes alongside, though I'll never believe as you've turned papist, until I see you barefoot at the church door, in a white sheet with a candle in your hand!"
With this parting shot, Slap-Jack seized his hat and ran out, leaving Mrs. Dodge to smile blandly over the fire, fingering her gold cross, and thinking drowsily, now of her clean sanded floor, now of her bright dishes and gaudy array of crockery, now of her own comely person and the agreeable manners of her lodger overhead.
Meanwhile it is scarcely necessary to say, that although Slap-Jack had expressed such haste to depart, he lingered in the cold wind off the moor not far from the house door, till he saw Alice emerge for the mouthful of fresh air that was so indispensable, but against which she fortified herself with a checked woollen shawl, which she muffled in a manner he thought very becoming, round her pretty head.
Neither need I describe the start of astonishment with
