"I warned you that you wouldn't like it."

"Like it? I don't even believe it. There ain't no such animile as a
Daddleskink."

"Madame," said the Tyro, drawing himself up to his full height, "I would
have you understand that, uneuphonious as the name may seem, the
Daddleskinks sat in the seats of the mighty when our best-known American
families of to-day, such as the Murphys, the Cohens, the Browns,
Joneses, and Robinsons, were mere nebulous films of protoplasmic mud."

"Oo-ooh!" said Little Miss Grouch, making a little red rosebud of her
mouth. "What magnificent language you use."

"Genealogists claim," continued the young man, warming to his subject,
"that the family came from Provence and was originally De Dalesquinc,
and that the name became corrupted into its present form. My friends
often call me Smith for short," he concluded, in sudden inspiration.

"Very tactful of them," she murmured.

"Yes. You might have had the privilege, yourself, if you hadn't derided
the name of Smith. Now, aren't you sorry?"

"I shall _not_ call you Smith," declared the girl. "I shall call you by
your own name, Mr. Sanders Daddle--Oh, it simply can't be true!" she
wailed.

Chance sent Alderson along the deck at this moment. "Hello, Dr.
Alderson," called the Tyro.

"Hello, Sandy!" said the other.

"You see," said the Tyro in dismal triumph.

Scant enough it was, as corroboration for so outrageous a facture as the
cognomen Daddleskink, but it served to convince the doubter.

"At least, you have the satisfaction of being unusual," she consoled
him.

"If you regard it as a satisfaction. Can you blame me for denouncing my
fate? How will you like introducing such a name to your friends?"

"I'm not going to introduce you to my friends. I'm going to keep you for
myself. Solitary confinement."

_"Solitude a deux?_ That's a mitigation. Oh, beautiful--I mean to say
plain but worthy _incognita_, suppose I ferret out the mystery of your
identity for myself?"

"I put you on honor. You're to ask no questions of any one. You're not
even to listen when anyone speaks to me. Do you promise?"

"May my eyes be blasted out and my hopes wrecked by never seeing you
again, if I be not faithful," he said.

But Fate arranges these matters to suit its more subtle purposes.

The Wondrous Vision had dismissed her slave, giving him rendezvous for
the next morning,--he had pleaded in vain for that evening,--and he was
composing himself to a th