rails, which might be trusted and which shunned.  All this, and much more, he mastered, and to such purpose that he soon began to prosper, to retain the clients who had been recommended to him, and to attract fresh ones.  But the work was never congenial.  He had inherited from his father his love of the air of heaven, his affection for a manly and natural existence.  To act as middleman between the pursuer of wealth, and the wealth which he pursued, or to stand as a human barometer, registering the rise and fall of the great mammon pressure in the markets, was not the work for which Providence had placed those broad shoulders and strong limbs upon his well knit frame.  His dark open face, too, with his straight Grecian nose, well opened brown eyes, and round black-curled head, were all those of a man who was fashioned for active physical work.  Meanwhile he was popular with his fellow brokers, respected by his clients, and beloved at home, but his spirit was restless within him and his mind chafed unceasingly against his surroundings.

“Do you know, Willy,” said Mrs. Hay Denver one evening as she stood behind her husband’s chair, with her hand upon his shoulder, “I think sometimes that Harold is not quite happy.”

“He looks happy, the young rascal,” answered the Admiral, pointing with his cigar.  It was after dinner, and through the open French window of the dining-room a clear view was to be had of the tennis court and the players.  A set had just been finished, and young Charles Westmacott was hitting up the balls as high as he could send them in the middle of the ground.  Doctor Walker and Mrs. Westmacott were pacing up and down the lawn, the lady waving her racket as she emphasized her remarks, and the Doctor listening with slanting head and little nods of agreement.  Against the rails at the near end Harold was leaning in his flannels talking to the two sisters, who stood listening to him with their long dark shadows streaming down the lawn behind them.  The girls were dressed alike in dark skirts, with light pink tennis blouses and pink bands on their straw hats, so that as they stood with the soft red of the setting sun tinging their faces, Clara, demure and quiet, Ida, mischievous and daring, it was a group which might have pleased the eye of a more exacting critic than the old sailor.

“Yes, he looks happy, mother,” he repeated, with a chuckle.  “It is not so long ago since it was you and I who were standing like that, and I don’t remember that we were very unhappy either.  It was croquet in our time, and the ladies had not reefed in their skirts quite so taut.  What year would it be?  Just before the commission of the Penelope.”

Mrs. Hay Denver ran her fingers through his grizzled hair.  “It was when you came back in the Antelope, just before you got your step.”

“Ah, the old Antelope!  What a clipper she was!  She could sail two points nearer the wind than anything of her tonnage in the service.  You remember her, mother.  You saw her come into Plymouth Bay.  Wasn’t she a beauty?”