"I suppose you heard that Ralph is to go up into the jungle, orchid hunting, with Mr. Gilchrist?" said Mrs. Denham.
"Yes; it will be a most interesting expedition. I could have wished to have joined it, only it was necessary to come home and pass my examination for master. Without my master's certificate I cannot take a berth as first mate, you know. Otherwise I should have liked to have gone with them, natural history is my great forte,—particularly Burmese natural history. I should have liked to have seen the Kain-no-ree, which inhabit lonely parts of the jungle."
"What sort of creature is that?" asked Jack.
"It is the missing link between birds and men, which Mr. Darwin failed to discover. It has the body of a bird, and the face of a man, and can talk away like anything."
"What a strange creature! I never heard of such a thing before. Are they pretty?"
"No, rather queer old birds, but conscientious. They have tongues which never told a lie. Then the links between the monkeys and the orchids are as much a question of degree, only upon one side, as those between monkeys and natives on the other."
"I believe," said Miss Mason quietly, "that we occasionally see the latter peculiarity at home. I have observed it in sailors."
Mr. Kershaw looked up at her. "Present company always excepted, of course," said he.
"Oh, certainly so! particularly when the company present is of Irish extraction," she replied.