. if it's not -- Look, children, look, there's your Papa! He's waving his handkerchief to you. Wave back! Nod your heads! Throw him a kiss!"

"Papa! . . . dere's Papa!" the twins told each other, and obediently set to wagging like a pair of china mandarins; the while with their pudgy hands they wafted kisses in the direction of an approaching boat-load of men.

"Where's he? I don't see!" opposed Cuffy, in a spirit to which the oneness of his sisters -- still more, of sisters and mother -- often provoked him. But this time he had a grievance as well. Throughout the voyage there had been ever such lots of laughing and talking and guessing, about who would reckernise Papa first: and he, as the eldest, had felt quite safe. Now Mamma, who had joined in the game and guessed with them, had spoilt everything, not played fair.

But for once his mother did not heed his pouting. She was gazing with her heart in her eyes at the Health Officer's boat, in which, by the side of the doctor coming to board the ship, sat Richard in a set of borrowed oilskins, ducking his head to avoid the spray, and waving and shouting like an excited schoolboy. In a very few minutes now the long, slow torture of the voyage would be over, and she would know the worst.

Here he came, scrambling up the ladder, leaping to the deck.

"Richard! . . . my dear! Is it really you? But oh, how thin you've got!"

"Yes, here I am, safe and sound! But you, wife . . . how are you? -- And the darlings? Come to Papa, who has missed you more than he can say! -- Good day, good day, Eliza! I hope I see you well! -- But how they've grown, Mary! Why, I hardly know them."

The Dumplings, pink and drooping with shyness but docile as ever, dutifully held up their bud mouths to be kissed; then, smiling adorably, wriggled back to Mamma's side, crook'd finger to lip. But Cuffy did not smile as his father swung him aloft, and went pale instead of pink. For, at sight of the person who came jumping over, he had been seized by one of his panicky fears. The Dumplings, of course, didn't remember Papa, they couldn't, they were only four; but he did . . . and somehow he remembered him diffrunt. Could it be a mistake? Not that it wasn't him . . .