! I will tell Bream to count on you. He is an excellent
accompanist. He can accompany you."

"Yes, but ... well, I don't know," said Sam doubtfully. He could not
help remembering that the last time he had sung in public had been at a
house-supper at school, seven years before, and that on that occasion
somebody whom it was a lasting grief to him that he had been unable to
identify had thrown a pat of butter at him.

"Of course you must sing," said Billie. "I'll tell Bream when I go down
to lunch. What will you sing?"

"Well--er--"

"Well, I'm sure it will be wonderful whatever it is. You are so
wonderful in every way. You remind me of one of the heroes of old!"

Sam's discomposure vanished. In the first place, this was much more the
sort of conversation which he felt the situation indicated. In the
second place he had remembered that there was no need for him to sing at
all. He could do that imitation of Frank Tinney which had been such a
hit at the Trinity smoker. He was on safe ground there. He knew he was
good. He clasped the girl to him and kissed her sixteen times.

Sec. 4

Billie Bennett stood in front of the mirror in her state-room dreamily
brushing the glorious red hair that fell in a tumbled mass about her
shoulders. On the lounge beside her, swathed in a business-like grey
kimono, Jane Hubbard watched her, smoking a cigarette.

Jane Hubbard was a splendid specimen of bronzed, strapping womanhood.
Her whole appearance spoke of the open air and the great wide spaces and
all that sort of thing. She was a thoroughly wholesome, manly girl,
about the same age as Billie, with a strong chin and an eye that had
looked leopards squarely in the face and caused them to withdraw abashed
into the undergrowth, or where-ever it is that leopards withdraw when
abashed. One could not picture Jane Hubbard flirting lightly at garden
parties, but one could picture her very readily arguing with a mutinous
native bearer, or with a firm touch putting sweetness and light into the
soul of a refractory mule. Boadicea in her girlhood must have been
rather like Jane Hubbard.

She smoked contentedly. She had rolled her cigarette herself with one
hand, a feat beyond the powers of all but the very greatest. She was
pleasantly tired after walking eighty-five times round the promenade
deck. Soon she would go to bed and fall asleep the moment her head
touched the pillow. But meanwhile she lingered here, for she felt that
Billie had