about: our skipper, Jonkheer Brederode."

Miss Rivers smiled delightfully, with just such a flush of ingenuous
surprise as I should have liked to see on another face.

"Why, how curious," she exclaimed, "that you should be a friend of Mr.
Starr's! I think we have _almost_ met Jonkheer Brederode before, haven't
we, Nell?"

"_Have_ we?" sweetly inquired Miss Van Buren. "I'm a little
near-sighted, and I've such a wretched memory for faces. Unless I notice
people particularly, I have to be introduced at least twice before it
occurs to me to bow."

"Oh, but, _Nell_," protested Miss Rivers. "Surely you know we saw
Mr.--no, _Jonkheer_ Brederode--with your cousin at the Museum in Delft,
and then afterwards you----"

"People's _clothes_ make so much difference," remarked Miss Van Buren.

"Oh, but I wasn't thinking of your sea adventure, so much as when
Jonkheer Brederode rode in the contest----"

"I'm afraid I was looking at the horses," cut in her stepsister.

If Robert had been on board at this juncture he would probably have
wished to box his cousin's ears, but I had no such desire, though mine
were tingling. In fact, I should have enjoyed boxing Robert's; for I saw
that, with the best intentions in the world (and intentions are
dangerous weapons!), my too-loyal friend had in some way contrived to
make me appear insufferable. Perhaps he'd given the impression that I
had boasted an intention to meet her within a given time, and she took
this for my brutal way of carrying out the boast.

"What is a Jonkheer?" the _pseudo_ Lady MacNairne demanded of Starr.

"I don't know exactly," he admitted.

"_Don't_ you? But, nephew dear, how can you help knowing, when you have
an _old_ friend who is one?"

(Was there a spice of malice in this question?)

"You see, almost ever since I've known him, I've thought of him as Alb,"
Starr explained hastily. "Alb is a kind of--er--pet name."

"I suppose it means something nice in Dutch," said Miss Rivers, in the
soft, pretty way she has, which would fain make every one around her
happy. "But I think Mr. van Buren told us that 'Jonkheer' was like our
baronet; Jonkheer instead of 'Sir,' isn't it?"

"Something of the sort," I answered.

"It sticks in the throat, if you'll excuse me for saying so, like a bit
of crust," remarked Aunt Fay.

"You can all call him Alb," said Starr.

"Why not compromise with Skipper?" asked Miss Van Buren, looking at my
yachting-cap (rather a nice one)