“Yes, he is quite different,” the girl said.  “Why, the first time I saw him he was as shy as shy could be.  It was quite hard work getting on with him.  Now he seems quite a man.”

“Nothing like that yet, Mabel,” Ralph protested.

“Not a man!” Mr. Penfold exclaimed.  “What! after wandering about as a pirate, capturing ships, and cutting men’s throats for anything I know, and taking part in all sorts of atrocities?  I think he’s entitled to think himself very much a man.”

Ralph laughed.

“Not as bad as that, Mr. Penfold.  They did take one ship, but I had nothing to do with it; and there were no throats cut.  I simply made a voyage out and back as a boy before the mast; and, as far as I hare been concerned, the ship might have been a peaceful trader instead of a French privateer.”

“Well, Mary, you have not changed much all these years,” Mr. Penfold said turning to Mrs. Conway, while the two young people began to talk to each other.  “I had thought you would be much more changed; but time has treated you much more kindly than it has me.  You are thirty-seven, if I remember right, and you don’t look thirty.  I am forty, and look at the very least ten years older.”

Mrs. Conway did not contradict him, for she could not have done so with truth.

“You are changed, Herbert; a great deal changed,” she said sadly, “although I should have know you anywhere.  You are so much thinner than when I saw you last; but your eyes have not changed, nor your smile.  Of course your hair having got gray makes a difference, and—­and—­” and she stopped.

“I am changed altogether, Mary.  I was a headstrong, impetuous young fellow then.  I am a fragile and broken man now.  But I am happy to meet you again.  Very happy in the thought that I can benefit your son.  I have an interest in life now that I wanted before; and in spite of my being anxious about Ralph while he was away, have been happier for the last six months than I have been for seventeen years past.”  Mrs. Conway turned away to conceal the tears that stood in her eyes, and a moment later said: 

“I am a most forgetful hostess, Mabel.  I have not even asked you to take off your things.  Please come along and let me show you your room.  Supper will be ready in a minute or two, and here are we stopping and forgetting that you and Mr. Penfold must be almost famished.”

As soon as they had sat down to supper, Mr. Penfold said.  “By the way, Ralph, I have a piece of news for you.  We stopped a couple of days, you know, in town, and I saw my friend at the Horse Guards, and had a chat about you.  He seemed to think that you would be better if you were a few months older; but as he acknowledged that many commissions had been given to lads under sixteen, and as you had just arrived at that age, and as I told him you have had no end of experience with pirates and buccaneers, and all that sort of thing, he was silenced, and your commission will appear in the next Gazette.”