pilot house, watching
the awakening of the picturesque village across the narrow harbor,
until the steamboat began to back out into the bay. The sunlight was
glorious, the skies blue, and the air fresh and sparkling. Armitage
faced the breeze with bared head and was drawing in deep draughts of
air when footsteps sounded behind him, and Anne Wellington and her maid
came to the rail.

"How perfectly delightful, Emilia," she exclaimed. "Now if I could
have a rusk and some coffee I should enjoy myself thoroughly. Why
don't they conduct this boat like an English liner!"

Her eyes, filled with humorous light, swept past Armitage; yes, they
were hazel.

"I am so hungry, Emilia!" She smiled and sniffed the air with mock
ardor. "Emilia, did n't you smell that tantalizing odor of hot
biscuits in the cabin? I wonder where it came from."

Armitage suddenly remembered a previous journey in this boat and he was
on the point of addressing the girl when he checked himself, but only
for a minute. Her mother had addressed him in her presence, had she
not? Certainly that constituted, well, if not an acquaintance, at
least something which involved warrant to assist her in time of stress,
which he decided to be here and now.

So he turned to the girl with that boyish grin and that twinkling of
his clear, gray eyes which people found so contagious in him, and
addressed her in the most natural way.

"If I don't intrude egregiously--" He rounded out this beautiful word,
a favorite of his father's, with a drawling, tentative inflection,
which caused Anne to smile in spite of herself. Seeing which Armitage
continued: "I happen to know that the steward in the galley below makes
biscuits and brews coffee at this hour each morning such as are given
to few mortals. If you 'll allow me the honor of playing waiter, I 'll
be delighted to serve you in the cabin."

[Illustration: "If you'll allow me the honor of playing waiter, I'll be
delighted to serve you in the cabin."]

Anne Wellington heard him in wide-eyed astonishment. Then she laughed,
not at all affectedly, and glanced swiftly through the cabin windows,
to where her mother sat apparently in slumber.

"I thank you. It's awfully polite of you. But you needn't play
waiter. Instead--would it be too much trouble for you to show us where
the--the--"

"Galley," suggested Armitage.

"Where the galley is?"

Armitage hesitated.

"No," he said, "it would be a pleasure.