“Thank you!” said Bellew, stepping in through the long French window, “but I should like to hear Miss Anthea play again, first, if she will?”

But Anthea, who had already risen from the piano, shook her head: 

“I only play when I feel like it,—­to please myself,—­and Aunt Priscilla,” said she, crossing to the broad, low window-seat, and leaning out into the fragrant night.

“Why then,” said Bellew, sinking into the easy-chair that Miss Priscilla indicated with a little stab of her needle, “why then the muffins were delicious, Aunt Priscilla, and Peterday was just exactly what a one-legged mariner ought to be.”

“And the shrimps, Mr. Bellew?” enquired Miss Priscilla, busy at her sewing again.

“Out-shrimped all other shrimps so ever!” he answered, glancing to where Anthea sat with her chin propped in her hand, gazing up at the waning moon, seemingly quite oblivious of him.

“And did—­He—­pour out the tea?” enquired Miss Priscilla, “from the china pot with the blue flowers and the Chinese Mandarin fanning himself,—­and very awkward, of course, with his one hand,—­I don’t mean the Mandarin, Mr. Bellew,—­and very full of apologies?”

“He did.”

“Just as usual; yes he always does,—­and every year he gives me three lumps of sugar,—­and I only take one, you know.  It’s a pity,” sighed Miss Priscilla, “that it was his right arm,—­a great pity!” And here she sighed again, and, catching herself, glanced up quickly at Bellew, and smiled to see how completely absorbed he was in contemplation of the silent figure in the window-seat.  “But, after all, better a right arm—­than a leg,” she pursued,—­“at least, I think so!”

“Certainly!” murmured Bellew.

“A man with only one leg, you see, would be almost as helpless as an—­old woman with a crippled foot,—­”

“Who grows younger, and brighter, every year!” added Bellew, turning to her with his pleasant smile, “yes, and I think,—­prettier!”

“Oh, Mr. Bellew!” exclaimed Miss Priscilla shaking her head at him reprovingly, yet looking pleased, none the less,—­“how can you be so ridiculous,—­Good gracious me!”

“Why, it was the Sergeant who put it into my head,—­”

“The Sergeant?”

“Yes,—­it was after I had given him your message about peaches, Aunt Priscilla and—­”

“Oh dear heart!” exclaimed Miss Priscilla, at this juncture, “Prudence is out, to-night, and I promised to bake the bread for her, and here I sit chatting, and gossipping while that bread goes rising, and rising all over the kitchen!” And Miss Priscilla laid aside her sewing, and catching up her stick, hurried to the door.

“And I was almost forgetting to wish you ’many happy returns of the day, Aunt Priscilla!’” said Bellew, rising.

At this familiar appellation, Anthea turned sharply, in time to see him stoop, and kiss Miss Priscilla’s small, white hand; whereupon Anthea must needs curl her lip at his broad back.  Then he opened the door, and Miss Priscilla tapped away, even more quickly than usual.