lot signals and the way the different lighthouses
winked.

Mr. Spearman, who recently had become a partner of her father's, was
also on the boat upon that trip. He had no particular duty; he was
just "an owner" like her father; but Constance observed that, while the
captain and the mates and the engineers were always polite and
respectful to her father, they asked Mr. Spearman's opinion about
things in a very different way and paid real attention--not merely
polite attention--when he talked. He was a most desirable sort of
acquisition; for he was a friend who could come to the house at any
time, and yet he, himself, had done all sorts of exciting things. He
had not just gone to Harvard and then become an owner, as Constance's
father had; at fifteen, he had run away from his father's farm back
from the east shore of little Traverse Bay near the northern end of
Lake Michigan. At eighteen, after all sorts of adventures, he had
become mate of a lumber schooner; he had "taken to steam" shortly after
that and had been an officer upon many kinds of ships. Then Uncle
Benny had taken him into partnership. Constance had a most exciting
example of what he could do when the ship ran into a big storm on Lake
Superior.

Coming into Whitefish Bay, a barge had blundered against the vessel; a
seam started, and water came in so fast that it gained on the pumps.
Instantly, Mr. Spearman, not the captain, was in command and, from the
way he steered the ship to protect the seam and from the scheme he
devised to stay the inrush of water, the pumps began to gain at once,
and the ship went into Duluth safe and dry. Constance liked that in a
man of the sort whom people knew. For, as the most active
partner--though not the chief stockholder--of Corvet, Sherrill and
Spearman, almost every one in the city knew him. He had his bachelor
"rooms" in one of the newest and most fashionable of the apartment
buildings facing the lake just north of the downtown city; he had
become a member of the best city and country clubs; and he was welcomed
quickly along the Drive, where the Sherrills' mansion was coming to be
considered a characteristic "old" Chicago home.

But little over forty, and appearing even younger, Spearman was
distinctly of the new generation; and Constance Sherrill was only one
of many of the younger girls who found in Henry Spearman refreshing
relief from the youths who were the sons of men but who could never
become men themse