orth your while."

I was as anxious to get there as he was. I did not care for a quarrel,
and I knew if he continued to use that tone in his remarks to me I
should answer as I felt. I pulled with all my strength, but against the
tide towing was hard work.

Victor sat on the amidships thwart of the dingy, with his back to me.
But Miss Colton, seated in the stern, was facing me and I could not help
looking at her. She did not look at me, or, if she did, it was as if I
were merely a part of the view; nothing to be interested in, one way or
the other.

She was beautiful; there was no doubt of that. Prettier even, in the
blue and white boating costume and rough-and-ready white felt hat, than
she had seemed when I saw her in the auto or her father's library. She
represented the world that I had lost. I had known girls like her. They
had not as much money as she, perhaps, but they were just as well-bred
and refined, and almost as pretty. I had associated with them as an
equal. I wondered what she would say, or think, if she knew that.
Nothing, probably; she would not care enough to think at all. It did
not matter to me what she thought; but I did wish I had not put on those
fool oilskins. I must look more like a country longshoreman than ever.

If I had any doubts about it they were dispelled when I had rowed the
two boats up the bay until we were abreast the Colton mansion. Then
Victor, who had been talking in a low tone with his fellow passenger in
the dingy, looked at the distant shore and, over his shoulder, at me.

"Here!" he shouted. "Where are you going? That's the landing over
there."

"I know," I answered. "But we shall have to go around that flat. We
can't cross here."

"Why? What's the reason we can't?"

"Because there isn't water enough. We should get aground."

He stood up to look.

"Nonsense!" he said. "There's plenty of water. I can't see any flat, or
whatever you call it."

"It's there, though you can't see it. It is covered with eelgrass and
doesn't show. We shall have to go a half mile further before we turn
in."

"A half mile! Why, confound it! it's past one o'clock now. We haven't
any time to waste."

"I'm sorry, but we can't cross yet. And, if I were you, I shouldn't
stand up in that boat."

He paid no attention to this suggestion.

"There are half a dozen boats, bigger than these, by the landing," he
declared. "There is water enough for them. What are you afraid of? We
haven't any tim