them to believe for a moment that there was any danger of invasion. And

they carried on all their fishing business almost as calmly as they do

now. For that, of course, they may thank you, Lord Nelson; but they have

not the smallest sense of the obligation."

"I am used to that, as your father knows; but more among the noble than

the simple. For the best thing I ever did I got no praise, or at any

rate very little. As to the Boulogne affair, Springhaven was quite

right. There was never much danger of invasion. I only wish the villains

would have tried it. Horatia, would you like to see your godfather at

work? I hope not. Young ladies should be peaceful."

"Then I am not peaceful at all," cried Dolly, who was sitting by the

maimed side of her "Flapfin," as her young brother Johnny had nicknamed

him. "Why, if there was always peace, what on earth would any but very

low people find to do? There could scarcely be an admiral, or a general,

or even a captain, or--well, a boy to beat the drums."

"But no drum would want to be beaten, Horatia," her elder sister Faith

replied, with the superior mind of twenty-one; "and the admirals and the

generals would have to be--"

"Doctors, or clergymen, or something of that sort, or perhaps even

worse--nasty lawyers." Then Dolly (whose name was "Horatia" only

in presence of her great godfather) blushed, as befitted the age of

seventeen, at her daring, and looked at her father.

"That last cut was meant for me," Frank Darling, the eldest of the

family, explained from the opposite side of the table. "Your lordship,

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