"Recollect how kind and good-natured Captain Dresser has always shown himself, who ever since you two came down here for your holiday, putting himself out in every way to suit your convenience, and never regarding anything as a trouble which could conduce to your pleasure.

I confess I am surprised at my little niece Nell speaking in such a way of so good a man.

If the Captain keeps you in suspense, depend upon it his purpose is to make you enjoy the treat he has in his mind ten times more than if you knew all about it beforehand." "But I hate being kept in suspense, auntie!" cried Miss Nellie rather naughtily, tossing her head indignantly, and throwing back her golden curls as if she were metaphorically pitching them at the offending old sailor.

"I like to know the best or worst at once.

I say, Dick, has the Captain told you anything about the treat he has for us ?" Poor Dick, who had been thoughtfully left behind by the old sailor, on account of Mrs Gilmour having expressed her intention of going down to the beach with the young people in the afternoon, hardly knew how to answer the question.
He did not like to tell an untruth by saying that he had no knowledge of the Captain's plans, nor did he wish to disoblige Miss Nell, so his answer was of the non-committal order--a sort of `I don't recollect' in its way.
"I can't tell, miss," was all he said, but, fortunately enough for him, it sufficed to throw Nellie off the scent and prevent her trying any further to worm the secret out of him; although, there is no doubt, she would have succeeded had she persevered, and Dick was on thorns until she went upstairs to get ready for going out, the little lady having an insinuating manner of her own that was well-nigh irresistible.
By the time she came below again, equipped for walking, Nellie's passing fit of ill-temper had disappeared, and she was not only her bright cheerful little self once more, but full of a project for adding to her collection a specimen of the `sea cucumber,' which the Captain had told her she might find if she only hunted diligently enough.
These strange marine animals belong to a species of `Triple Alliance' of their own, being connected in a greater or less degree with the anemones, the ringworms, and the `sea urchins'; albeit, the sea cucumbers possess one very great advantage over these cousins of theirs, in being able, when they so please, to turn themselves inside out and dispense with their stomachs, as well as what would be considered other equally necessary portions of their corporate frames.
When in this transformed, or `turn-coat' stage of his existence, the animal consists only of an empty bag, or pocket, that has at the broadest end an apparently useless mouth, but which he still continues to make use of for feeding purposes; and, by and by, when my gentleman feels disposed to return to his original state, seemingly by the mere effort of will, his tentacles sprout out one by one, the mouth-end of his bag becomes surmounted by a sort of mushroom head, his interior person gets filled up, and the sea cucumber is himself again, "all a- taunto!" The Captain had advised Nellie to search amongst the old wooden piles of the pier, as a likely situation to find these animals, and others he named quite as curious, such as the `beroe' and the `balanus,' which while looking as if inanimate yet are `all alive,' and, if not `kicking,' certainly may be seen fishing, either with natural lines of their own or with a sort of trawl-net, very similar to which we human bipeds use.
But, although Miss Nellie, with Dick acting under her directions and Bob, too, assisting in a desultory way when the superior attractions of crab-hunting on his own account did not beguile him from the pursuit, all hunted everywhere, finding every variety of young whelks, cockles, and other shell-fish ova on the pier-piles, which they were able to examine at their pleasure, it being low tide, no sea cucumbers to be seen anywhere.
Nellie was in despair at her failure and felt almost inclined to cry; but, Dick at the last moment, when the search was just about to be given up, raked out a perfect specimen from a hole in the rock-work beneath one of the buttresses that was nearly awash with the water--a darksome dungeon, isolated from the vulgar herd of barnacles, and common but kindred anemones with which the stuck-up sea cucumber was too proud to associate.
Naturally enough, Miss Nellie was delighted with her capture, and, she tenderly bore him home in triumph to be added to her extensive marine collection, which had now increased so considerably, that her aunt declared laughingly that she would have to build a room especially to contain it presently, her house not being big enough for the purpose.
"Rubbish!" the Captain had called her first attempt at collecting, but, since then, she had learnt something under the instruction of the old sailor and displayed greater discrimination in the objects of her zeal; although still, perhaps, inclined to err in the matter of quantity over quality, leaning fondly, as most enthusiasts do, to common things.
Not only was the album which her aunt had given her pasted as full as it could hold of different sorts of seaweed, known and unknown alike to Bob and herself; but she had a pile of shells big enough to build a rockery.
In addition to these, her accumulation of pet specialities included a seven-fingered starfish, which is supposed by the ignorant to be peculiarly inimical to the adventurous cat that swalloweth it; and a ring-horned pandalus or `Aesop prawn,' which queer creature Master Bob appropriately christened `The Prawnee Chief,' much to the annoyance of Miss Nell, who had become quite grand now in her language, becoming `puffed up,' as Bob said, with her newly-acquired `knowledge'-- a `little' of which, as the proverb tells us, is "a dangerous thing." The Aesop prawn, by the way, gained the prefix to his name from having a hump on his back like the Phrygian slave, the fabulist.