rds the close of the evening, will you? Excuse me, but
she is the thorough-bred of the ship. And if I have only one hop down
the promenade, I want it to be with a girl who'll remind me of some one
that is making West Kensington worth inhabiting. Only think, Marmion, of
a girl like her--a graduate in arts, whose name and picture have been in
all the papers--being willing to make up with me, Dick Hungerford! She
is as natural and simple as a girl can be, and doesn't throw Greek roots
at you, nor try to convince you of the difference between the songs
of the troubadours and the sonnets of Petrarch. She doesn't care a rap
whether Dante's Beatrice was a real woman or a principle; whether James
the First poisoned his son; or what's the margin between a sine and a
cosine. She can take a fence in the hunting-field like a bird--! Oh, all
right, just hold still, and I'll unfasten it." And he struggled with a
recalcitrant buckle. "Well, you'll not forget about Miss Treherne, will
you? She ought to go just as she is. Fancy-dress on her would be gilding
the gold; for, though she isn't surpassingly beautiful, she is very
fine, very fine indeed. There, now, you're yourself again, and look all
the better for it."

By this time I was again in my uniform, and I sat down, and smoked, and
looked at Hungerford. His long gossip had been more or less detached,
and I had said nothing. I understood that he was trying, in his blunt,
honest way, to turn my thoughts definitely from Mrs. Falchion to Belle
Treherne; and he never seemed to me such a good fellow as at that
moment. I replied at last: "All right, Hungerford; I'll be your
deputation, your ambassador, to Miss Treherne. What time shall we see
you on deck?"

"About 11.40--just in time to trip a waltz on the edge of eight bells."

"On the edge of Sunday, my boy."

"Yes. Do you know, it is just four years ago tomorrow since I found Boyd
Madras on the No Man's Sea?"

"Let us not talk of it," said I.

"All right. I merely stated the fact because it came to me. I'm
mum henceforth. And I want to talk about something else. The first
officer,--I don't know whether you have noticed him lately, but I tell
you this: if we ever get into any trouble with this ship he'll go to
pieces. Why, the other night, when the engine got tangled, he was as
timid as a woman. That shock he had with the coal, as I said before, has
broken his nerve, big man as he is."

"Hungerford," I said, "you do not generally