I recollect a circumstance which occurred, which will prove the apathy of his disposition, and how unfit he was to command so fine a frigate. We I remained at home until my time was complete, had been scudding three days, when the weather and then set off for Plymouth to undergo my exbecame much worse. O'Brien, who had the middle amination. The passing-day had been fixed by the watch, went down to report that "it blew very hard." | "Very well," said the captain; "let me know if it blows harder."

“Come, Mr. Simple, stand up again," and the

I was so hurt at what the captain said, that I could not control my feelings. I replied, with a' captain, kindly; that is, if you feel suterently quivering hip, that I had had no time to order composed; if not, we will wait a little another uniform and I burst into tears, Don't be afraid, we wish to pass you"

* Indeed, Burrows, you are rather too hirsh," said the third captain; "the lad is frightened. Let him sit down and compose himself for a little while. Sit down, Mr. Simple, and we will try you again directly."

I sat down, checking my grief and trying to recall my attered senses. The captains, in the meantime, turning over the logs to pass away the time; the one who had questioned me in navigation reading the Plymouth newspaper, which had a few minutes before been brought on board and sent into the cabin. "Hey! what's this? I say, Burrows - Keats, look here,” and he pointed to a paragraph. Mr. Simple, may I ask whether it was you who saved the soldier who leaped off the wharf yesterday "

"Yes, sir," replied I; "and that's the reason why my uniforms are so shabby. I spoilt them then, and had no time to order others. I did not like to say why they were spoilt." I saw a change in the countenances of all the three, and it gave me courage. Indeed, now that my feelings had found vent, I was no longer under any apprehension.

|

|_ I was not afraid, and stood up immediately. I answered every question satisfactorily; and firing that I did so, they put more difficult ones. - Very good, very good, indeed, Mr. Simple; now let me ask you one more; it's seldom done in the serve and perhaps you may not be able to answer it. IN you know how to club-haul a ship!"

"Yes, sir," replied I; and I immediately stated how it was to be done.

"That is sufficient, Mr. Simple; I wish to ask you no more questions. I thought at first you were a careless officer and no seaman : I now find you are a good seaman and a gallant young man Do you wish to ask any more questions!” continued he, turning to the two others.

They replied in the negative; my passing certificate was signed, and the captains did me the honour to shake hands with me, and wish me speedy promotion. Thus ended happily the severe trial to my poor nerves; and, as I came out of the cabin, no one could have imagined that I had been in such distress within, when they beheld the joy that irradiated my countenance.

which had come in with me from the street. Perhaps there were tears in my eyes at the prospect of meeting my father after four long years—at the thought of beginning life again with him from that very moment, as it were. I went cautiously towards the counting-house at the end of the shop; it went up three or four steps, and was shut from public gaze, when there was any representative of the public to gaze at it, by a second glass front, behind which was a wire-blind, behind which was a lamp burning brightly, behind which was some one, with his back towards me, writing at a desk. My father in his new post of principal cashier, indubitably!

A COLD RECEPTION. [From "Little Kate Karby." By F W ROBINSON. OOKING at Westmair's from Watling Street was to set down the great house as not worth its salt. Strangers making a short cut to the Mansion House, or whose offices were in broader thoroughfares, might have passed Westmair's all their lives without knowing it; it was a strip of a house even where houses ran in strips as a rule. This was only Westmair's London office--a place which was handy for the London folk, but not imperative for Westmair's to possess--a crotchet of the firm, that had always had faith in City offices for anything. Westmair's proper was ten miles from London, and the Westmair's oils and the Westmair's polish, which had made the fortune of the family, were kept and mixed in large quantities miles away from the shadow of St. Paul's. This was only a house of samples, and orders and general correspondence.

When I was in London last, he had sat at a little desk below this window, with a gas jet above his premature greyness, and had blown verbal communications through a gutta-percha pipe into the office above him; but times had changed, and now there was a little bald man with a bent back to blow at my father instead.

I turned the handle of the half-glass door-had the glass been cleaned since I was there last -- I had not seen this last-named personage, and and passed into the stuffy shop. All was very was proceeding boldly to the inner sanctum, when misty, scarcely to be accounted for by the fog he piped out, "What's your business, young lady?”

reason. The dialogue beneath the counting-house window had not disturbed the studies of the cashier, who was very much bent over his desk, as I pushed open the door and stole in. It was a small counting-house, with an iron safe on one side of the room, that looked respectable and solid. How quickly Westmair's made money in their quiet way was evident by that big safe, and by the cheques which had come by the last post, and which the cashier was examining and endorsing before locking up for the night, now that banking hours were over. I laid my hands upon his shoulders, and said— "I have come back, dear, as you asked meback for good! Don't be very much afraid, or very much scared, but take time to think that I am here, your little Faith!"

and focussed me with two horn-rimmed spectacles. | began beating nervously-I hardly knew for what This old gentleman was the new clerk-the office and book-keeper. I knew all about him at once. My father's rise had left a vacancy in the post, which my grandfather had been the first of our family to fill; there had been no more Kirbys to the good, hence an advertisement, and this wornout, broken-down man at eighty pounds a year! Westmair's never gave more than eighty pounds a year for their office-keeper- they called this little, dusky, ill-smelling shop an office and possibly the situation was not worth more, for there had been hundreds always ready to jump at it. There had never seemed a great deal to do for the money-I had often caught my father dozing over the books, although it was his fixed idea that Westmair's worked him like a horse, and I believe | this old man had been asleep before I had intruded on the premises.

He was alive to business very quickly-juniors | in office are frequently the most energetic of the staff.

"What's your business, young lady?" "Oh, if you please, don't speak so loudly," I said, gesticulating towards the counting-house; "I want to surprise him.”

The office-keeper looked from me to the window over his head, and then back from the window to me, and glared. It was a full minute and a half before the idea seized him, and then he grinned from ear to ear, and turned me a little qualmish with three yellow tusks and a furry tongue, of which he made the most.

“Oh, you know Mr.

"Of course I know him. I have come thousands of miles to see him; all the way from the Cape of Good Hope!"

The book-keeper, or office-keeper, looked somewhat amazed at this avowal, for he shut his mouth and glared at me again through his ugly spectacles.

"You can go up, then," he said, dipping his pen into the ink and flourishing it towards the counting-house, "if he expects you. Does he expect you?"

"To be sure he does."

All this was said in a low whisper, for I knew that my father was nervous, and I wished to surprise him, not to frighten him. But before it was all said, or almost before-for I have a faint recollection of going on with a few more words, even after my discovery—I had become aware that my hands were not resting on my father's shoulders, which were round shoulders, and weak, and would have given way more, and that in lieu of the scanty grey-flecked hairs of Mr. Kirby, there was rising up before me a curlier, darker, and more vigorous head of hair.

"Oh, my!" I gasped forth, and then a sunburnt face turned round as my hands dropped to my side, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. He was a young man of some four or five and twenty years of age before whom I was standing-a principal, probably, a Westmair or a somebody of importance who had taken my father's post for a day or two. He was inclined to laugh at me and my embarrassment. I saw the curves of his mouth trying hard to keep themselves down, and a pair of big brown eyes seemed laughing already. I was ashamed of myself, until I grew hot and indignant and "fussy," and thought that he might have shown more consideration for one who had made so egregious a blunder. He rose from his chair at last.

"I beg your pardon," he said, seeing how "I shouldn't have thought it of him," he mut- grave I had become, "but I think this is the wrong tered; "in business hours, too-well!"

I did not stay to explain more fully my conduct to one who had evidently set me down for a very forward young woman. I was in a hurry to embrace my dear dad, and to hear him murmur forth, "My darling Faith-I am so glad you have come back!" He would be glad of that, I was very Man of many faults as he was, peevish, discontented, and eccentric, I had always thought that he had loved his girls in his way. My woollen dress did not betray me by any rustling, as I ascended the steps, on the top of which my heart

sure.

office. You-you'll find it higher up the street perhaps."

He was a trifle confused himself, now, and gave an odd and impulsive scratch to his head, forcible but inelegant.

"No, it is not the wrong office; I have been very foolish; pray forgive my rudeness, sir, but I only expected to find one person here—not you, certainly," I stammered forth.

"You have got in the wrong place, I think," was his reply, "unless-oh, dear !—whose place do you want, may I inquire?"