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“Oh, Mr. Miles has some wonderful stories,” said she; “he has had some tremendous adventures.”

“The deuce he has!” thought Dick, but he only said: “You should take travellers’ tales with a grain of salt.”

“Thanks,” Alice instantly retorted; “I shall remember that when you tell yours.”

They laughed over the retort. All three began to feel quite at ease.

“So you kept up your sketching out there, and drew bush scenes for our illustrated papers?” said the Colonel.

“Two or three times; more often for the Colonial papers.”

“We saw them all,” said Alice, graciously “I mean the English ones. We cut them out and kept them.” (She should have said that she did.)

“Did you, though?” said Dick, delighted.

“Yes,” said Alice, “and I have a crow to pick with you about them. That ‘Week in the Sandwich Islands’—it was yours, wasn’t it?”

Dick admitted that it was.

“Oh, and pray when were you in the Sandwich Islands?”

He confessed that he had never seen them.

“So you not only cheated a popular journal—a nice thing to do!—but deceived the British public, which is a far more serious matter. What explanation have you to offer? What apology to ‘One who was Deceived’ as I shall sign my ‘Times’ letter, when I write it?”