ike Lottie; but if Lottie's
been behaving her way with Mr. Breckon, he must suppose the rest of the
family is like her."

"Boyne," said his mother, provisionally, "what sort of person is Mr.
Breckon?"

"Well, I think he's kind of frivolous."

"Do you, Boyne?"

"I don't suppose he means any harm by it, but I don't like to see a
minister laugh so much. I can't hardly get him to talk seriously about
anything. And I just know he makes fun of Lottie. I don't mean that he
always makes fun with me. He didn't that night at the vaudeville, where
I first saw him."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you remember? I told you about it last winter."

"And was Mr. Breckon that gentleman?"

"Yes; but he didn't know who I was when we met here."

"Well, upon my word, Boyne, I think you might have told us before," said
his mother, in not very definite vexation. "Go along, now!"

Boyne stood talking to his mother, with his hands, which he had not
grown to, largely planted on the jambs of her state-room door. She was
keeping her berth, not so much because she was sea-sick as because it
was the safest place in the unsteady ship to be in. "Do you want me to
send Ellen to you!"

"I will attend to Ellen, Boyne," his mother snubbed him. "How is
Lottie?"

"I can't tell whether she's sick or not. I went to see about her and she
motioned me away, and fairly screamed when I told her she ought to keep
out in the air. Well, I must be going up again myself, or--"

Before lunch, Boyne had experienced the alternative which he did not
express, although his theory and practice of keeping in the open air
ought to have rendered him immune. Breckon saw his shock of hair, and
his large eyes, like Ellen's in their present gloom, looking out of it
on the pillow of the upper berth, when he went to their room to freshen
himself for the luncheon, and found Boyne averse even to serious
conversation: He went to lunch without him. None of the Kentons were at
table, and he had made up his mind to lunch alone when Ellen appeared,
and came wavering down the aisle to the table. He stood up to help her,
but seeing how securely she stayed herself from chair to chair he sank
down again.

"Poppy is sick, too, now," she replied, as if to account for being
alone.

"And you're none the worse for your little promenade?" The steward came
to Breckon's left shoulder with a dish, and after an effort to serve
himself from it he said, with a slight gasp, "The other side,