he repeated. "I sailed a catboat from Boston
to Egg Harbor before your mother was born. By the way, you seem very
anxious about boat sailing. Are you afraid of the water?"

She laughed gaily. "I deserve that," she said, "and I accept it. But
perhaps I have done something that you never did. I have sailed a
felucca."

"Very good," said the captain; "if there's a felucca where we're going
you can sail me in one."

They went to a Virginia seaside resort, these two, and left old Jane in
charge of the toll-gate.

Early in the day after they arrived they went out to engage a boat. When
they found one which suited the captain's critical eye, he said to the
owner thereof: "I will take her for the morning, but I don't want
anybody to sail me. I will do that myself."

"I don't know about that," said the man; "when my boat goes out--"

He stopped speaking suddenly and looked the captain over and over, up
and down. "All right, sir," said he. "And you don't want nobody to
manage the sheet?"

"No," interpolated Olive, "I'll manage the sheet."

So they went out on the bounding sea. And as the wind whistled the hat
off her head so that she had to fling it into the bottom of the boat,
Olive wished that her uncle kept a toll-gate on the sea. Then she could
go out with him and stop the little boats and the great steamers, and
make them drop seven cents or thirteen cents into her hands as she stood
braced in the stern; and she was just beginning to wonder how she could
toss up the change to them if they dropped her a quarter, when the
captain began to sing Tom Bowline. He was just as gay-hearted as she
was.

It was about noon when they returned, for the captain was a very
particular man and he had hired the boat only for the morning. Olive had
scarcely taken ten steps up the beach before she found herself shaking
hands with a young man.

"How on earth!" she exclaimed.

"It was not on earth at all," he said; "I came by water. I wanted to
find out if what I had heard of the horrors of a coastwise voyage were
true; and I found that it was absolutely correct."

"But here!" she exclaimed. "Why here? You could not have known!"

"Of course not," he answered; "if I had known I am sure I would have
felt that I ought not to come. But I didn't know, and so you see I am as
innocent as a butterfly. More innocent, in fact, for that little
wagwings knows where he ought not to go, and he goes there all the
same."

Captain Asher was sti