jumped up the instant she was announced, and said that he was obliged to be on hard domestic duty the first day of his return, so he could not stay another minute. "But I could not put off coming to thank you for all your attention to my wife; and I want to know when my friend Hopkinson will be at home? Ah! he abused the poor old 'Alert', but the 'Alacrity' seems to be the slowest tub of the two."
"Oh! you must not call the Alacrity names; John says it's the best voyage he has ever made; and that he is so rich now, he shall buy a place somewhere near Portsmouth, or Plymouth, and settle down into a country house; but, bless your heart, till there's a dry deluge," (a new invention of Mrs. Hopkinson's, which she had to explain), "and the world is all land and no water, John will never be happy ashore."
"John will be happy any where, with the individuals whom he irreverently mentions ten times a-day at sea as his old woman and his kids; and now I must bid the old woman
