new diamond marquise ring.

"What have you two been doing now?" she said, with a weak little smile,
as she turned it in the light.

"Talking--just talking, Mama; there's nothing mean about Harvey."

There was not. The boy had made a treaty on his own account. Railroads,
he explained gravely, interested him as little as lumber, real estate,
or mining. What his soul yearned after was control of his father's
newly purchased sailing-ship. If that could be promised him within what
he conceived to be a reasonable time, he, for his part, guaranteed
diligence and sobriety at college for four or five years. In vacation
he was to be allowed full access to all details connected with the
line--he had not asked more than two thousand questions about it,--from
his father's most private papers in the safe to the tug in San
Francisco harbour.

"It's a deal," said Cheyne at the last. "You'll alter your mind twenty
times before you leave college, o' course; but if you take hold of it
in proper shape, and if you don't tie it up before you're twenty-three,
I'll make the thing over to you. How's that, Harve?"

"Nope; never pays to split up a going concern. There's too much
competition in the world anyway, and Disko says 'blood-kin hev to stick
together.' His crowd never go back on him. That's one reason, he says,
why they make such big fares. Say, the _We're Here_ goes off to the
Georges on Monday. They don't stay long ashore, do they?"

"Well, we ought to be going, too, I guess. I've left my business hung
up at loose ends between two oceans, and it's time to connect again. I
just hate to do it, though; haven't had a holiday like this for twenty
years."

"We can't go without seeing Disko off," said Harvey; "and Monday's
Memorial Day. Let's stay over that, anyway."

"What is this memorial business? They were talking about it at the
boarding-house," said Cheyne weakly. He, too, was not anxious to spoil
the golden days.

"Well, as far as I can make out, this business is a sort of
song-and-dance act, whacked up for the summer boarders. Disko don't
think much of it, he says, because they take up a collection for the
widows and orphans. Disko's independent. Haven't you noticed that?"

"Well--yes. A little. In spots. Is it a town show, then?"

"The summer convention is. They read out the names of the fellows
drowned or gone astray since last time, and they make speeches, and
recite, and all. Then, Disko says, the secretaries of the A