Like to show--hmm? Hold on. It
don't quite suit me yet but--what's your hurry? When it does, I Joe!
it'll be a ripsnorter. I've worked eight year and a half on it and they
say genius is jest a trick o' takin' infinitessimal pains.... No, I'm
not sleepy. Reckon I'll go up to the pilot-house. So long. Pleasant
dreams."

While he so spoke Ramsey had said: "Here comes another boat, down in the
next bend. Or is she in the chute?"

"The chute," replied Hugh. "That's the old _Antelope_."

"Ah, up and running again! I know all about you and the _Votaress_
saving her people that awful night she sank."

"Who told you?"

"Oh, a dozen, at a dozen times; but the best was Phyllis, writing to
us."

"Phyllis behaved heroically that night; made up for all the past--though
really she'd done that before."

"I'm glad you feel that way," murmured Ramsey and suddenly asked: "Why
did you take my father to your room just now?"

"To show him the plans for another boat."

"Humph!" What crystalline honesty was in his answers, she pondered. They
were as prompt as a mirror's.

"Rivals," she remarked, "don't ordinarily show plans."

"Your father and I are not ordinary rivals."

What did that mean? Her, and not mere boats' plans? She did not look at
him this time. Like "California" she could see without looking. "Think
I'll rejoin the Gilmores," she sighed, as certain couples came up to see
the _Antelope_ go by. She feared a recurrence of "'Lindy Lowe." On the
way to the pilot-house she leisurely inquired:

"Do you think you'll ever build a finer boat than this?"

"Yes, and larger, and faster."

"Not this season?"

"No, I should hope not for many. Yet----"

"Boats' lives," she prompted, "are so uncertain."

"Yes, grandfather thinks----"

"Oh, if only he were here!" She paused to let Hugh notice that she had
"were" and "was" in hand at last. Then:

"How long will that boat be?"

"Three hundred and thirty feet. She'll have ten boilers. Her cylinders
will be forty-three inches, her stroke eleven feet. She'll carry
eighty-five hundred bales of cotton."

"Goodness! How wide will she be?"

"In the beam fifty. Over all, at the wheelhouses, ninety. Her wheels
will be forty-five feet in diameter and their buckets nineteen feet
span. You still like figures, boats' figures, I hope?"

She still liked, for second choice, to make him, to herself, ridiculous;
liked it even now while inwardly laughing and weeping at him for not
comin