'My letter,' said Tom, 'was written in Whitsun week; I wish you had had it.'
'Ay, it would have been precious from its rarity,' said Harry. 'What commission did it contain, may I ask?'
'You have not by good luck brought me home a Chinese flea?'
'He has all the fleas in creation,' said Daisy confidentially, 'cats' and dogs', and hedgehogs', and human; and you would have been twice as welcome if you had brought one.'
'I've brought no present to nobody. I'd got my eye on a splendid ivory junk, for Blanche's wedding present, at Canton, but I couldn't even speak to send any one after it. You have uncommon bad luck for a sailor's relatives.'
'As long as you bring yourself home we don't care,' said Blanche, treating the loss of the junk with far more resignation than did Tom that of the flea.
'If you only had a morsel of river mud sticking anywhere,' added Tom, 'you don't know the value the infusoria might be.'
'I had a good deal more than a morsel sticking to me once,' said Harry; 'it was owing to my boat's crew that I am not ever so many feet deep in it now, like many better men. They never lost sight of me, and somehow hauled me out.'
Gertrude gave him a hug, and Mary's eyes got so misty, that her skein fell into worse entanglements than ever.
'Were you conscious?' asked Ethel.