kitchen with the pleasant meal all ready, he felt as if he should like to stay to tea instead of going home.

“Yes, it’s the sugar, sir, I know; and you’d think it would sweeten some people’s temper, but it don’t.”

“Which if it’s me you mean, and you’re thinking of this morning—”

“Which I am, Jem, and you ought to be ashamed. You grumbled over your breakfast, and you reg’larly worried your dinner, and all on account of a button.”

“Well, then, you should sew one on. When a man’s married he does expect to find buttons on his clean shirts.”

“Yes, and badly enough you want ’em, making ’em that sticky as you do.”

“I can’t help that; it’s only sugar.”

“Only sugar indeed! And if it was my last words I’d say it—there was a button on the neck.”

“Well, I know that,” cried Jem; “and what’s the good of a button being on, if it comes off directly you touch it? Is it any good, Mas’ Don?”

“Oh, don’t ask me,” cried the lad, half-amused, half annoyed, and wishing they’d ask him to tea.

“He dragged it off, Master Don.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did, Jem, and you know you did, just to aggravate me.”

“Wasn’t half sewn on.”

“It was. I can’t sew your buttons on with copper wire.”

“You two are just like a girl and boy,” cried Don. “Here you have everything comfortable about you, and a good place, and you’re always quarrelling.”

“Well, it’s his fault, sir.”

“No, sir, it’s her’n.”

“It’s both your faults, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

“I’m not,” said Sally; “and I wish I’d never seen him.”

“And I’m sure I wish the same,” said Jem despondently. “I never see such a temper.”

“There, Master Don,” cried the droll-looking little Dutch doll of a woman. “That’s how he is always going on.”

“There, Jem, now you’ve made your poor little wife cry. You are the most discontented fellow I ever saw.”

“Come, I like that, Master Don; you’ve a deal to brag about, you have. Why, you’re all at sixes and sevens at home.”

This was such a home thrust that Don turned angrily and walked out of the place.

“There!” cried Sally. “I always knew how it would be. Master Don was the best friend we had, and now you’ve offended him, and driven him away.”

“Shouldn’t ha’ said nasty things then,” grumbled Jem, sitting down and attacking his tea.

“Now he’ll go straight to his uncle and tell him what a man you are.”

“Let him,” said Jem, with his mouth full of bread and butter.

“And of course you’ll lose your place, and we shall be turned out into the street to starve.”

“Will you be quiet, Sally? How’s a man to eat his tea with you going on like that?”

“Turned out into the world without a chance of getting another place. Oh! It’s too bad. Why did I ever marry such a man as you?”

“’Cause you were glad of the chance,” grumbled Jem, raising his hand to pour out some tea, but it was pushed aside indignantly, and the little woman busily, but with a great show of indignation, filled and sweetened her husband’s cup, which she dabbed down before him, talking all the while, and finishing with,—

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jem.”

“I am,” he grumbled. “Ashamed that I was ever such a stupid as to marry a girl who’s always dissatisfied. Nice home you make me.”

“And a nice home you make me, sir; and don’t eat your victuals so fast. It’s like being at the wild beast show.”

“That’s right; go on,” grumbled Jem, doubling his rate of consumption. “Grudge me my meals now. Good job if we could undo it all, and be as we was.”

“I wish we could,” cried the little woman, whose eyes seemed to say that her lips were not telling the truth.

“So do I,” cried Jem, tossing off his third cup of tea; and then to his little wife’s astonishment he took a thick slice of bread and butter in each hand, clapped them together as if they were cymbals, rose from the table and put on his hat.

“Where are you going, Jem?”

“Out.”

“What for?”

“To eat my bread and butter down on the quay.”

“But why, Jem?”

“’Cause there’s peace and quietness there.”

Bang! Went the door, and little Mrs Wimble stood gazing at it angrily for a few moments before sitting down and having what she called “a good cry,” after which she rose, wiped her eyes, and put away the tea things without partaking of any herself.

“Poor Jem!” she said softly; “I’m afraid I’m very unkind to him sometimes.”

Just at that moment Jem was sitting on an empty cask, eating his bread and butter, and watching a boat manned by blue-jackets going off to the sloop of war lying out toward the channel, and flying her colours in the evening breeze.

“Poor little Sally!” he said to himself. “We don’t seem to get on somehow, and I’m afraid I’m a bit rough to her; but knives and scissors! What a temper she have got.”

Meanwhile, in anything but a pleasant frame of mind, Don had gone home to find that the tea was ready, and that he was being treated as a laggard.

“Come, Lindon,” said his uncle quietly, “you have kept us waiting some time.”

The lad glanced quickly round the well-furnished room, bright with curiosities brought in many a voyage from the west, and with the poison of Mike’s words still at work, he wondered how much of what he saw rightfully belonged to him.

The next moment his eyes lit on the soft sweet troubled face of his mother, full of appeal and reproach, and it seemed to Don that his uncle had been upsetting her by an account of his delinquencies.

“It’s top bad, and I don’t deserve it,” he said to himself. “Everything seems to go wrong now. Well, what are you looking at?” he added, to himself, as he took his seat and stared across at his cousin, the playmate of many years, whose quiet little womanly face seemed to repeat her father’s grave, reproachful look, but who, as it were, snatched her eyes away as soon as she met his gaze.

“They all hate me,” thought Don, who was in that unhappy stage of a boy’s life when help is so much needed to keep him from turning down one of the dark side lanes of the great main route.

“Been for a walk, Don?” said his mother with a tender look.

“No, mother, I only stopped back in the yard a little while.”

His uncle set down his cup sharply.

“You have not been keeping that scoundrel Bannock?” he cried.

“No, sir; I’ve been talking to Jem.”

“Ho!” ejaculated the old merchant. “That’s better. But you might have come straight home.”

Don’s eyes encountered his Cousin Kitty’s just then, as she gave her head a shake to throw back the brown curls which clustered about her white forehead.

She turned her gaze upon her plate, and he could see that she was frowning.

“Yes,” thought Don, “they all dislike me, and I’m only a worry and trouble to my mother. I wish I was far away—anywhere.”

He went on with his tea moodily and in silence, paying no heed to the reproachful glances of his mother’s eyes, which seemed to him to say, and with some reason, “Don’t be sulky, Don, my boy; try and behave as I could wish.”

“It’s of no use to try,” he said to himself; and the meal passed off very silently, and with a cold chill on every one present.

“I’m very sorry, Laura,” said her brother, as soon as Don had left the room; “and I don’t know what to do for the best. I hate finding fault and scolding, but if the boy is in the wrong I must chide.”

“Try and be patient with him, Josiah,” said Mrs Lavington pleadingly. “He is very young yet.”

“Patient? I’m afraid I