PEACEFULLY we journey then over this balmy sea. My enlarged family is at peace, excepting Susannah. The meekness, the surprised interest of Ram Nad in us, in our purposes and his own situation, are irresistible, except to Susannah. Mrs. Ulswater seems to regard him as a sort of second orphan. Susannah resents this idea.

We approach the Malay Peninsula. Ram Nad sits cross-legged on a rug, teaching Susannah the Pali alphabet. I read the English poets to Mrs. Ulswater, who sews garments for Susannah. So does Susannah, sometimes, with vicious jabs.

Mrs. Ulswater does not attend to the reading. She has something on her mind.

“Dr. Ulswater,” she says at last, “is Ram Nad a well-educated man?”

“My dear, he knows everything that I don't. Therefore he knows infinitely more than I do.”

“Why shouldn't we bring up Susannah among us, instead of looking for an orphanage any more?”

“Perfectly possible.”

“Why shouldn't we have a mission of our own on the Violetta, instead of hunting for other people's missions?”

“An idea!”

“Well, then, we will.”

“A sort of floating mission,” I continue. “Fascinating, unique conception! That is, if pursued moderately. The orphans are a success, so far, including—with some reservations—Ram Nad. But I wouldn't invest too heavily, too rapidly, in orphans. I would take, in fact, some pains to get hold of preferred stock.”

She agrees thoughtfully: “Of course, the Violetta won't hold a great many. I should want nice ones. That's what you mean.”

“Precisely. For instance, Ram Nad is more interesting, perhaps, than those whom Susannah so forcibly described as inwardly composed of 'mush and dassent.'”

“Then that's what we'll do.”

I think, then, with all deference to destiny, that we will.

“I have sometimes wondered,” I remark to Mrs. Ulswater, “just what our idea was in kidnapping Ram Nad—if it was quite accidental, or if we were not, on that occasion—shall we say?—in collusion with accident.”

“Why”—Mrs. Ulswater returns to her sewing—“of course! I thought he wanted to steal Susannah. He wasn't a bit good at pretending. Goodness, no! But I didn't know how he was going to do it, so I asked Captain Jansen to stay awake below. But it would have been dreadful if Ram Nad had drowned. I just let him try, because, of course, I thought, after behaving so, he couldn't say much if we carried him off.”

“But why, at that time, did we want to carry him off?”

“It was the pictures in the big Bible,” Mrs. Ulswater replies. “All the old men there look like him. I thought it would be nice to have him.”

Such is our situation. Here I float on Elysian seas. (My next article, on the Scaphopodae, will astonish the scientific world. My collection of Cephalopterae is now unique. I have proved three mistakes in Schmidt's classification of the Coelenterates.)

Ulswater.

P. S.—Ram Nad begs to remain with us. He is inwardly composed of guile and gammon. Still, like Susannah, he is in a way a personage.

But suppose Mrs. Ulswater learns Oriental mesmerism of Ram Nad, and supplements—quite unnecessarily—by this means, her government of me. I should protest: “No, Mrs. Ulswater! Not while I know myself master of this household!”

P. P. S.—Suppose she insists!