32 THE WORLD OF ICH.

no obstacle in the way. On the contrary, she undid
the lashings of the heli with her own hand, and told
her wondering partner, with a good-humoured but
firm smile, to steer where he chose, and she would
content herself with the society of the two young
Buzzbys (both miniature fac-similes of their father)
till he came back.

Once again a whale-ship prepared to sail from the
port of Grayton, and once again Mrs. Bright and
Isobel stood on the pier to see her depart. Isobel
was about thirteen now, and as pretty a girl, accord-
ing to Buzzby, as you could meet with in any part of
Britain. Her eyes were blue and her hair nut-brown,
and her charms of face and figure were enhanced im-
measurably by an air of modesty and earnestness that
went straight home to your heart, and caused you to
adore her at once. Buzzby doated on her as if she
were his only child, and felt a secret pride in being in
some indefinable way her protector. Buzzby philoso-
phized about her, too, after a strange fashion. “You
see,” he would say to Fred, “it’s not that her figure-
head is cut altogether after a parfect pattern—by no
means, for I’ve seen pictur’s and statues that wos
better—but she carries her head a little down, d’ye
see, Master Fred? and there’s where it is; that’s the
way I gauges the worth o’ young women, jist accordin’
as they carry their chins up or down. If their brows
come well for’ard, and they seems to be lookin’ at the
eround they walk on, I knows their brains is firm
stuff, and in good workin’ order; but when I sees