I had come back from India. I was in Southampton. Only a few months before I had been teaching whist to the natives on the banks of the Ganges, and I had made my fortune out of the Indian rubber. I wonder if they remember the great Sahib who always had seven trumps and only one other suit. Tailoring is in its infancy over there, and the natives frequently had no suit at all. I had not placed my money in the Ganges banks, because they are notoriously unsafe. I had brought it with me to Southampton. I was rich, but solitary. Yet I was a dashing young fellow, especially in my printed conversation. When it rained, I said "dee." Just smack your lips over the delightful wickedness of it, and then proceed.

There was nothing to do. I couldn't go to Ryde, although the waiter assured me it was a pleasant trip. Neither did I care to go for a walk. The situation was at a dead-lock, and I said so.

"Well," said the waiter, "there's the quay."

So I went to the quay. I heard a sweet young voice remark, "What a shocking bad hat!" I fell in love with her at once. She was with a governess—obviously French—who remonstrated.

"'Ush! Naughty! Signor will overhear you, Mees Smith. Then I give you spanks."

"Well, he shouldn't wear such a bad hat, Mademoiselle."

I was just turning round to introduce myself, when I saw that they had both stepped on to the steamer. I followed them. The French Governess seemed to be in doubt about the boat.

"Antelope of the western horizon," she said, to a surly onlooker, "I will give you three piastres and a French halfpenny if you have ze goodness to tell me if this is ze Ryde steamer."

"How the dickens am I to know whether it's the right steamer or not, when I don't know where you're going to?" asked the man.

I knocked him down at once, and as he rose to return the compliment my hat fell off. Miss Smith caught it on the tip of her toe as it was falling, sent it twenty feet into the air, caught it again in her large beautiful hands, and pressed it firmly down over my eyes.

In the wilds of Assam one gets unused to the grand freedom and cultured geniality of English ladies. I hardly knew what to do, but I extricated myself slowly from the folds of the hat, chucked her under the chin, and remarked, "Houp-lÀ!" The French Governess had retired to the cabin to be ill, and we were rapidly steaming from the quay.

"Don't!" said Miss Smith, looking very shy and pretty.

"Certainly not," I replied. "Of course you will have some tea with me?"

"Oh, my!" she murmured, in her sweet, refined voice. "Well, I must first go and look after poor Mlle. Donnerwetter."

While she was below, I secured two umbrellas from the stoker, and improvised a sort of tent with this and a back number of the Times. I also procured a few delicacies such as young girls love—a pot of French mustard, two bottles of ginger-beer, some shrimps, and several large buns. I spread them all out in a row. It seemed to make them look more luscious, somehow. We were very warm and cosy, seated over the boiler of the engine. Was I in love? Pshaw! Decidedly not, and yet—well, she looked very pretty as she sat there, chattering freely about herself, and lightly dusting with her handkerchief one of the shrimps which was a trifle soiled. I gathered from her conversation that she was very rich, that she had no parents, and would lose all her money if something happened.

"And is that something—er—marriage?" I ventured to ask.

"Gar'n!" she replied, in her pretty school-girl slang. "What are yer getting at?"

"Suppose the boiler blew up, what then?"

"Ah!" she replied, sadly; "Mademoiselle will blow me up if she finds us out. Listen! she's calling."

"Then it's all right, because if she calls now she'll find us in."

At this moment the steamer reached its destination, and I was compelled to leave Miss Smith. However, I followed her and the Governess until they entered the gates of Plumfields, a large school for young ladies. Why should I go back to Southampton? I think I will remain at Ryde.

(To be concluded in Four Chapters.)

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The Prince "Starring" at Poole.—His Royal Highness was just as successful last week at Poole in Dorsetshire (everyone who was there will indorse it) as he was at Pyramids in Egypt.

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