wins gravely accosted his mother, but she and the captain
were laughing at Ramsey while the grandfather said: "My dear child, your
hair is beautiful."

With face still hid on Joy's bosom, the girl shuffled her feet, then
turned upon the old man and playfully intoned:

"I'm not a child!"

"Ramsey!" said the mother, and "Missie!" said the nurse.

"Hugh," said the captain, "suppose you take Miss Ramsey up to the
pilot-house and show her the----"

The girl laid a hand on his arm. "Do you want to tell mom-a something
you don't want me to hear?"

"Why--" began the captain, and laughed. "On second thought, no. I want
to tell your mother and the commodore something before any one else can,
and before I tell any one else; but you may hear it if----"

"If I won't get frightened. Has anything happened to the boat?"

"Ramsey!" "Missie!" lamented matron and servant again.

"Mother," with much dignity pleaded the twins.

"Oh, no," said the captain, "not to the boat."

"I want to stay and hear it," whined Ramsey, jerking up and down. "I
won't get scared."

"'T'u'd be de fust time sence she wuz bawn ef she did," audibly mused
the nurse, and Hugh said: "I believe that."

The girl stared round at him and then back at his father, her eyes wide
with merriment. "No Ramsey to the pilot-house with him if he can help
it!" she managed to say, and fell over her mother and nurse, down into
her chair and across its arm, her laughter jingling like a basket of
glass rolling down-stairs. Suddenly she hearkened. The captain was
speaking to her mother:

"Must you reach Loui'ville as quickly as you can?"

"Ah!--well? yes? we muz' do our possible. My 'usband he--Ramsey!"

The girl had turned face down in a play of collapse. "Nobody," she
piped, "finishes what he starts to tell!"

"Ho!" playfully retorted the mother, "an' you muz' go?--cannot wait?
Well, good night." But no one went.

Her mother turned again to the captain. "There is something veree
bad--on the boat?" Ramsey sat up alert.

The captain's reply was heard by none but her mother and the
grandfather, but evidently the twins knew whatever there was to tell.
"It was no time to take deck passengers at all!" said one of them to the
other, in full voice, while the grandfather was asserting:

"We are as wholly at your command, madam, as if this were Gideon Hayle's
boat. Our one thought is your safety."

"And comfort of mind," added the captain, about to go.

Ramsey guesse