me. The ready-made clothes from Sydney had
transformed her. A simple skirt and shirt-waist of some sort of wash-
goods set off her trim figure with a hint of elegant womanhood that was
new to him. Brown slippers peeped out as she crossed the compound, and
he once caught a glimpse to the ankle of brown open-work stockings.
Somehow, she had been made many times the woman by these mere extraneous
trappings; and in his mind these wild Arabian Nights adventures of hers
seemed thrice as wonderful.

As they went in to breakfast he became aware that Munster and Sparrowhawk
had received a similar shock. All their air of _camaraderie_ was
dissipated, and they had become abruptly and immensely respectful.

"I've opened up a new field," she said, as she began pouring the coffee.
"Old Kina-Kina will never forget me, I'm sure, and I can recruit there
whenever I want. I saw Morgan at Guvutu. He's willing to contract for a
thousand boys at forty shillings per head. Did I tell you that I'd taken
out a recruiting license for the _Martha_? I did, and the _Martha_ can
sign eighty boys every trip."

Sheldon smiled a trifle bitterly to himself. The wonderful woman who had
tripped across the compound in her Sydney clothes was gone, and he was
listening to the boy come back again.

CHAPTER XIX--THE LOST TOY

"Well," Joan said with a sigh, "I've shown you hustling American methods
that succeed and get somewhere, and here you are beginning your muddling
again."

Five days had passed, and she and Sheldon were standing on the veranda
watching the _Martha_, close-hauled on the wind, laying a tack off shore.
During those five days Joan had never once broached the desire of her
heart, though Sheldon, in this particular instance reading her like a
book, had watched her lead up to the question a score of times in the
hope that he would himself suggest her taking charge of the _Martha_. She
had wanted him to say the word, and she had steeled herself not to say it
herself. The matter of finding a skipper had been a hard one. She was
jealous of the _Martha_, and no suggested man had satisfied her.

"Oleson?" she had demanded. "He does very well on the _Flibberty_, with
me and my men to overhaul her whenever she's ready to fall to pieces
through his slackness. But skipper of the _Martha_? Impossible!"

"Munster? Yes, he's the only man I know in the Solomons I'd care to see
in charge. And yet, there's his record. He lost th