"A very little one, ma'am, I assure you." Mrs Gilmour burst into a fit of laughter, in which they all joined heartily; the barrister's jovial roar being heard above the music of the band.
"Ah, no wonder you didn't like my seeing it!" she cried with pleasant irony, which, however, made the old sailor wince, this "yacht" of his being a subject on which he was wont to enlarge amongst his friends.
"Why, from what you said, I thought she was a big schooner like the one that took the cup at Cowes last year when we all went over with those horrid Tomkinses to see the regatta! Call that a yacht, a boat of such a size?
I call it a cockleshell!" This nettled the Captain very considerably, it must be confessed.
"Well, ma'am, you may call it what you please," he replied shortly, with some little heat, putting on his hat again and jamming it down on his head firmly, using a good deal of force as if expending in that way his latent caloric.

"But, cockleshell or no cockleshell, she's big enough for me!" "But, Captain dear, isn't there room enough for me, too ?" asked Nell coaxingly, seeing that he was vexed, and sliding her little hand into his, as if to show that she at all events was not joining in the fun against him.

"Won't you take Bob and me ?" Her touch somehow or, other banished his pettishness, enabling him to see that Mrs Gilmour was only joking, and that he had but played into her hands, as he said to himself, by losing his temper over it.
"I tell you what," he now exclaimed, without a single trace of ill- humour.

"You shall see that I'm not ashamed of my little craft, for I'll have the _Zephyr_ brought over from Gosport to-morrow.

What is more, too, the whole lot of you shall go out for a sail in her--by Jove!" The Captain was as good as his word, the yacht being towed across the following afternoon from Haslar Creek, where she had been lying, ever since the last yachting season, on the mud flats that there exist.
The little craft, which was a dapper cutter with an oyster-knife sort of bow and a clean run aft, as if she could race well when heeling over and show a good deal of her copper sheathing, did not exceed the tonnage mentioned by the Captain.
But, in spite of her smallness of size, she appeared to have the making of a good sea boat in her, and gained many admirers amongst the Southsea watermen as they surveyed her at her new moorings; the little craft being anchored off the coastguard-station and placed now under the charge of Hellyer, when the Captain was not immediately looking after her himself.
Mrs Gilmour, however, remained obdurate; for, though satisfied now that the "yacht" really was an actual fact instead of merely a creation of her old friend's fancy, being somewhat averse to adventuring her life on the deep save in large vessels, and even of these she confessed feeling rather shy since the wreck of the _Bembridge Belle_, she, very aggravatingly, declined going out in the cutter--a want of taste on her part shared by her sister-in-law, whose weak nerves supplied a more reasonable pretext for not accepting the Captain's usual invitation to make the little vessel's better acquaintance.
Bob's father, however, exhibited no such reluctance; and, as for Bob himself, he and Nellie and Dick were all in the seventh heaven of delight when, a morning or two afterwards, there being a nice nor'- westerly breeze blowing, which was good both for working out to sea and running home again, the Captain took them for a sail, managing single- handed the smart cutter as only a sailor, such as he was, could.
Thenceforward, Bob's holidays were all halcyon days.
He had certainly enjoyed himself before; in his rambles on the beach, in his daily dip and new experiences of the delights of swimming; in the various little trips he and Nellie had taken; aye, and in the pleasurable occupation of collecting all those strange wonders of the shore, with which they had been so recently made familiar.
But, never had he enjoyed himself to the extent he did now! There was nothing, on his once having tasted the joy of sailing, that could compare with it for a moment in his mind; and, if his own tastes had been consulted, he would have been content to have spent morning, noon, and night on board the _Zephyr_.
It was the same with Dick; and, under the Captain's able tuition, both the boys soon acquired sufficient knowledge of tacking and wearing, sailing close-hauled and going free with the helm amidships, besides other nice points of seamanship, as to be able almost to handle the cutter as well as their instructor.
Nellie, naturally, could not enter so fully into these details as Bob and Dick; but, still, she took quite as much pleasure as they did in skimming over the undulating surface of the water and hearing the gurgling ripple made by the boat's keel.
She felt a little alarm sometimes, perhaps, when, with her mainsail sharply braced up, the _Zephyr_ would heel over to leeward, burying her gunwale in the foam ploughed up by her keen-edged bow, as it raced past, boiling and eddying, astern.
On one occasion the Captain took them out trawling between the Nab and Warner light-ships; where a bank of sand stretches out to sea, forming the favourite fishing-ground of the Portsmouth watermen hailing from Point and the Camber at the mouth of the harbour.
"What is trawling ?" asked Master Bob, of course, when the matter was mooted by the owner of the cutter.
"What is trawling, eh ?" repeated the old sailor, humming and cogitating for a minute or so.