ey,' said she,
'Pig, will you marry me?'
'Wrrumph!' said he.

"I can't grunt very nicely," she admitted. "_You_ do it."

"Go away," he implored, gazing from side to side like a trapped animal.
"Somebody'll see you. They'll lock you up."

"Me? Why?" Her eyes opened wide in the loveliness of feigned surprise.
"Much more likely you. I doubt whether you really should be at large.
Such a queer-acting person!"

"I--I'll write and explain," he said desperately.

"If you do, I'll show the letter to the captain."

He regarded her with a stricken gaze. "Wh--why the captain?"

"Being a helpless and unchaperoned young lady," she explained primly,
"he is my natural guardian and protector. I think I see him coming now."

Legend is enriched by the picturesque fates of those who have
historically affronted Heaven with prevarications no more flagrant than
this. But did punishment, then, descend upon the fair, false, and frail
perpetrator of this particular taradiddle? Not at all. The Tyro was the
sole sufferer. Had the word been a bullet he could scarcely have dropped
more swiftly. When next he appeared to the enraptured gaze of the
heckler, he was emerging, _ventre a terre_, from beneath the far end of
the life-boat.

"I'll be in my deck-chair between eight and nine to receive explanations
and apologies," was her Parthian shot, as he rose and fled.

At the time named, the Tyro took particularly good care to be at the
extreme other side of the deck, where he maintained a wary lookout. Not
twice should the huntress catch him napping. But he reckoned without her
emissaries. Lord Guenn presently sauntered up, paused, and surveyed the
quarry with a twinkling eye.

"I'm commanded to bring you in, dead or alive," he said.

"It will be dead, then," said the Tyro.

"What's the little game? Some of your American rag-josh, I believe you
call it?"

"Something of that nature," admitted the other.

"This will be a blow to Cissy," observed his lordship. "She's used to
having 'em come to heel at the first whistle. I say, Mr. Daddleskink--"

"My name's not Daddleskink," the Tyro informed him morosely.

"I beg your pardon if I mispronounced it. How--"

"Smith," said the proprietor of that popular cognomen.

"I say," cried the Briton in vast surprise, "that's worse than our
pronouncing 'Castelreagh' 'Derby' for short!"

"S-m-i-t-h, Smith. The other was a joke and a very bum one! Alexander
Forsyth Smith from now on."

"H