the jewelry and ruffles. "Were you ever in an
explosion?" she asked. The words came of themselves. She was backsliding
from her table decorum.

"No," he replied, "I was never in an explosion."

"Ah, my child!" broke in the mother, "questions again? And even to
Captain Courteney?"

Ramsey laughed, gave the deck a wilful scuff, and demanded of the
captain: "Were you ever on a burning boat?"

Madame Hayle flinched, gasped, and drew her from him as he replied:
"Yes--once--I was."

The mother started again. "There!" she cried; "so! you 'ave it! Now,
go"--she laughingly pushed the querist--"go, talk with Hugh--allong with
yo' brotheh."

The girl, as she backed away, turned to the grandfather: "Was Hugh on
the boat--when it burned?"

Her mother smiled with new pain, but while the captain bowed himself
away the old man replied: "Come, Miss Ramsey, sit down with me and I'll
tell you the story--if we may, madam?--Hugh--some chairs, will you?"

Ramsey sprang to Hugh's aid, but her brother had a mind for mutiny. "You
told me," he accused his mother, "that I could go watch them play
cards!"

"Yes?" she asked in a pretty irony; "well, then, of co'se, sisteh or no
sisteh, you muz' instan'ly go!" The steady tinkle of the sister's
laughter as she passed with a chair provoked her own: "Yes, go! Me, I'll
rimmain with her till Joy"--the nurse--"ritturn from suppeh."

The boy went, flinging back for a last word: "You want to hear the story
as bad as Ramsey does!"

"'Tis true!" she brightly said to the old gentleman. "Since all those
nine year', me, I've want' to hear the Courteney side of that!"--little
supposing that this was what neither she nor Ramsey would then or ever
quite lay hold upon.

"No," laughed the irrelevant girl to the old man, "you sit here." She
faced him up-stream, her mother on his "stabboard," as she said, herself
on his "labboard," and Hugh on her left, "labboardest of all." But--to
Hugh--"now, wait--wait! If I'm on your stabboard--how can you be--on my
lab'--? Oh, yes, I see!" She dropped into her chair and, to Hugh's great
weariness, laughed till her curls fell on her cheeks, larboard and
starboard by turns.

Yet she ceased sooner than any one had hoped and the four sat silent
while several ladies sauntered past on the arms of escorts, all highly
entertained to see such cordiality between any Hayles and the
Courteneys. One trio that paused near by to catch some Hayle or
Courteney utterance praised a