he had caught. Her beautiful wondering eyes played high and low, like the flight of an imprisoned swallow, then, as she sank upon a seat, dropped at last as if the creature were bruised with its limits. "I should like it still better if it were my very own!"
"Well, mum," Chivers sighed, "if it wasn't against my duty I could wish indeed it were! But the Captain, mum," he conscientiously added, "is the lawful heir."
It was a wonder what she found in whatever he said; he touched with every word the spring of her friendly joy. "That's another of your lovely old things—I adore your lawful heirs!" She appeared to have, about everything that came up, a general lucid vision that almost glorified the particular case. "He has come to take possession?"
Chivers accepted, for the credit of the house, this sustaining suggestion. "He's a-taking of it now."
This evoked, for his companion, an instantaneous show. "What does he do and how does he do it? Can't I see?" She was all impatience, but she dropped to disappointment as her guide looked blank. "There's no grand fuss———?"
"I scarce think him, mum," Chivers with pro-
