ith you on your sea voyage, Charlotte," she said.
"I must get away from Washington and from mother. No, don't raise your
eye-brows and begin to scold before you know what I mean! I am not
going to criticize my maternal parent, but I am so under her thumb at
the moment that I am a flabby mass of indecision. I have no more mind
than a jellyfish, yet I have to decide a matter of vital importance
within a month. How can I make up a non-existent mind? Answer me that.
Your life is so fixed and serene and settled; so full of absorbing
work; you are so flattered and appreciated that you are like a big
ship anchored in a safe harbor, and you can't think what it's like to
be a silly little yacht bobbing about on the open sea!" (Such is the
uncomprehending viewpoint of twenty toward thirty; the calm assumption
that ladies of that mature age can have no love-affairs of their own
to perplex them!)

"There is no need of your being a silly little yacht, Dolly!" I
answered. "If you want to make a real voyage you have the power to
choose your craft."

"Mother always chooses for me," she said with a pout. "She doesn't gag
me and put me in irons and lead me up the gangplank by brute force,
but she dominates me. I start out each morning like a nice, fat, pink
balloon and by evening, though I haven't felt any violent pin-pricks,
I am nothing but a little shrunken heap of shriveled rubber. You know
it, Charlotte! You have seen me bouncing at breakfast and seen me flat
at dinner!"

It was impossible not to laugh at her. "Don't be ridiculous!" I
expostulated. "There is nothing between you and happiness but a little
cloud so diaphanous that a breath of common sense would blow it away.
Now read your magazine and let me write in my log-book. It is intended
to be an informal report to my chief, of the islands we are to visit.
We shall be at St. Thomas to-morrow morning and in the four days we
have been journeying from New York the only topic of conversation in
which you have shown the slightest enthusiasm is whether you should or
should not marry Marmaduke Hogg!"

"Don't call him all of it, Charlotte," and she shuddered. "Mother is
always doing it and I can't bear it!" whereupon she flounced about on
her deck-chair and hid her face in her steamer-rug.

* * * * *

It was a foolish little love-story, that of Dorothea Valentine. Her
mother was a mass of polite and unnecessary conventions; a pretty sor