18 ALL ABOARD FOR SUNRISE LANDS.

peculiarities of dialect of the old and the new country had fastened
themselves upon her like the barnacles encrusting the piers of an old
wharf. “A change of what?” asked Mrs. Rogers, fancying that the
old lady wanted the boys’ locks to be removed. “Oh, I see now! But
they take the air and walk out every day.”

“T mean a journey, marm.”

“A journey?” thought Mrs. Rogers. “Where can it be?”

There happened along, that very week, Uncle Nat Stevens. God
bless the Uncle Nats with which he has sprinkled the world like
plums in a pudding. This Uncle Nat was a man past forty, and a
sea-captain. He had a stout body and a big head, a rosy face, brown
eyes and a brown moustache to match them. He had much energy
of manner, and he was a thorough seaman. He had helped himself and
gone up rapidly from post to post, but he was ready to help others,
and an old sailor said, “the cap’n was a regular chicken at heart if any
one might be swamped in a rough sea and need help,” for his heart
matched in size his head.

The day after his arrival in Concord, the captain and Mrs. Rogers were .
talking about family-matters. “The boys are pretty well, but they do
need a change,” affirmed Mrs. Rogers.

“Hillen Maria,” the captain replied in his bea rapid way, “you say
your lambs need a change, and I don’t wonder, for they look thin as a
potato-skin. Now see! You know I am said to be one of those folks
always along just in time to put their foot into everything.”

So he was, but it was a most excellent foot he brought with him.

“Now, let me tell you what kind of a cruise I shall be up to this
year. I am going to San Francisco, and there taking steamer, shall
run over to Japan. At a Japanese port, I expect to find my old |
ship, the Antelope. She has been in other hands the past year, but
when she reaches Japan, the owners wish to make a change, and