MISSING! "Humph! that makes the rubber," cried the Captain late one evening, some little time after the events recorded in the last chapter, when they were winding up the day with a game of whist, which had succeeded the nightly battle of cribbage wherewith Mrs Gilmour and the old sailor used to amuse their leisure before the advent of the barrister and Mrs Strong on the scene.

"What say all you good people to a trip to Southampton to-morrow?
There will be an excursion steamer running there in the morning, starting from the old pier at ten o'clock sharp, I think." "All right; now you've beaten us, I suppose you want to appear generous, and divert our attention from our defeat," said Mrs Dugald Strong, with a fine touch of sarcasm, as the Captain chuckled over the odd trick, and collected the spoils of war, in the shape of sundry little fish- counters, which he and his partner, aunt Polly, had won, through the old sailor's successful manipulation of the cards.

"I believe we've seen all that is to be seen in the isle of Wight." "Indade you have," corroborated Mrs Gilmour.

"We've been everywhere in the sweet little place--no wonder it's called the `garden of England'! Sure we've seen everything, from the broken grating of the window which poor Charles the First was unable to squaze himself through at Carisbrook Castle, being too fat, poor man, down to the hawthorn-bush at Faringford over against Beacon Down atop of the Needles, where Tennyson used to hide his long clay pipes after smoking them, before going out for his walk on the cliff.

Sure, and I don't think, Dugald, there's anything more for ye to see there at all, at all!" "Oh, auntie, you have forgotten `little Jane's' grave in the pretty old churchyard at Brading, and the cottage in which the good `dairyman's daughter' lived at Arreton," chimed in Nellie, who was more romantic.
"Yes, and those dear little Swiss villas too, at Totland Bay, aunt Polly, peeping out from the fir-trees and bracken, with the fuchsias like big trees in their front gardens, and the scarlet geraniums growing wild in the hedgerows!" "Ah," said Master Bob, "I liked the smugglers' cave at Ventnor.