in the service to know how it is about a middy that's just got
his commission. We all know how it is with ourselves when we first get
our C.P.O.--except you, Reggie, and you'll get yours some day. Am I
right? Sure I am. If there's one thing on earth we're going to do then,
it's to live up to regulations.

"No, we'll never again remember so much about rules and regulations as
we do then. No catching us in anything irregular; no sir. And so with
Mr. Renner, the new-made ensign. He brings out the blue-book and shows
the boson. 'Look,' he says. 'Paragraph fourteen thousand four hundred
and forty-two,' or whatever it was. 'Hose,' he goes on to read, 'is
expendible property, to be surveyed and wiped off the property-books by
condemning to the scrap-heap and sold in the open market to the highest
bidder. There,' says our new-made ensign to our boson, 'what it says.
And according to that, the admiral himself couldn't take that hose from
that scrap-heap without authority. No, not if it was no more than an old
shoe-lace, he couldn't.'

"'But that won't fill our water-tanks, and I'd like to use that hose,
sir,' says the boson.

"'M-m!' says Mr. Renner. 'M-m! now if Mr. Shinn was aboard--' Mr. Shinn
was our executive. 'But Mr. Shinn is ashore. However, I'll tell you
what; I will speak to the captain about it,' and he steps inside the
bulkhead and writes a message to the skipper.

[Illustration: He brings out the blue-book and shows the boson]

"Now our skipper was a good old soul, and thought a lot of his boson,
and wanted to do everything he could to help him out, but also, like a
good many other good old captains in the service, he'd forgotten a lot
of this stuff about regulations. Ordinarily--say, if 'twas anything to
be done out to sea--he'd have said, 'Why, of course, Kiley; go ahead and
do it,' But this was in a navy yard, ashore, and when he gets a note
with something about regulations in it, he begins to haul to.

"And many a good sea-going old skipper is bluffed the same way about
anything that spells regulations, you betcher. So now our good old
skipper begins to tumble his hair and pull his moustache and look again
at Mr. Renner's note. At last he tells the messenger to say to Mr.
Renner that he will look into it and let him know.

"Another hour of studying, and the captain calls in his new yeoman
that--"

"Was that you, Dallie?"

"Never mind--and cut out the personal questions, Reggie son. And
remember you do