The wedding was a glorious success, and I did think that Milly or any other girl ought to be jolly proud of such a husband as Captain Helston. He looked splendid, though his left arm was still almost helpless, and made a speech at the lunch afterwards; and dear old Toddles—he had managed to get away too—had to reply for the ladies, and we all enjoyed ourselves, except Toddles, who was red and angry for the rest of the day.
Dr. Fox was there, quite genial, for a wonder, and Captain Williams and Mr. Saunderson, and Mr. Parker and Mr. Lang, now both of them commanders.
Mr. Pattison had gone on the Australian station (I felt very sorry for him), but Captain Cummins was there, and made an awfully funny speech, and then went off without saying good-bye to anybody.
Toddles and I managed to fasten a couple of white shoes on the carriage with wire, so that they couldn't get them off, and we made a splendid noise when Captain Helston and Milly drove away.
In the evening Toddles and I went to a theatre—Captain Helston had given us a box all to ourselves—and we did wish that Mellins could have been with us. We had a ripping time. Toddles forgot all about the speech, and we managed to catch the last trains back—he to Portsmouth and I to Portland. He was much more lucky than I was, for his ship was alongside the jetty, and he only had to walk aboard, whilst I had to take a shore boat and pull two miles off to the ship, getting on board at two in the morning, wet through, and had to be up again by six o'clock, as I happened to be signal-midshipman for the week.
I never heard anything more of Ping Sang, though I believe he sent Captain Helston and Dr. Fox two expensive Chinese jars; but about three months after the wedding both Toddles and I got letters from A Tsi, and he sent us each a very quaint carved ivory junk.
We were both jolly pleased with these, and Toddles says he intends handing his junk down to his children as an heirloom.
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[Transcriber's note: the source book had running headings on its odd-numbered pages. In this etext, those headings have been combined into an introductory paragraph at the start of each chapter.]
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. MIDSHIPMAN GLOVER, R.N. ***