Miss Pipkin, and
soon they were chatting companionably. The girls had removed the door to
the cabin, and laying it from seat to seat, had improvised a table. Over
it they had spread cloths, and on the cloths were plates piled high with
good things. The odor of coffee greeted the Captain's nostrils, as he
came forward after securing the dory.

"Well, I'd like to know! Where in tarnation did you get the stove to
b'ile the coffee on?" he asked, sniffing the air.

"We brought it with us," replied Elizabeth.

"You fetched a stove in them baskets?"

"Certainly. Come and see it."

She drew her old friend toward the cockpit. There stood the steaming
coffee-pot over an alcohol flame.

"Well, I swan!"

Paper plates were scattered about over the improvised table, chicken
piled high on some, sandwiches on others, doughnuts, cream-puffs, and
apple tarts on still others. Indeed, not a thing had been left out, so
far as the Captain could see.

"If this ain't the likeliest meal I ever see, then, I'd like to know. I
feel right now as if I could eat the whole enduring lot, I'm that
hungry," declared the skipper.

Elizabeth served, moving about as gracefully as a fawn. Mr. McGowan
watched her with no attempt to hide his admiration. The one question in
his mind all day had been: what did she think of him for his part in the
affair at the Inn? He decided that he would take advantage of the first
opportunity to prove to her that no other course had been left open for
him.

Dinner over, the Captain filled his pipe, and stood in the door of the
cabin. He smoked quietly, and watched the ladies put the things away.
Miss Pipkin was folding the cloths, and on her the seaman's gaze came to
a rest. Would the old home seem different with her in it?

"Hadn't we better start?"

The Captain jumped. "I cal'late I'm getting nervous, jumping like
that."

"Or in love?"

"Maybe you're right, Mack."

"Honest confession?"

"I ain't confessing nothing. I was referring to your idea that we'd best
be under way," explained the Captain, with a wry smile.

As he spoke he leaned over the engine, and gave it a turn. Tommy, Miss
Pipkin's black cat, was mincing contentedly at some scraps when the
chug-chug of the exhaust shot from the side of the boat. Tommy shot from
the cockpit. He paused on the upper step, a startled glare in his eyes.
He forgot the tempting morsels; he forgot his rheumatism; he was bent on
flight. And fly he did. With a wild