he beach with you once in a while, it
will do her a sight of good, and give her an appetite--although what I
want her to hev an appetite for I am sure I don't know; for, ef she gets
well, of course she'll go back to the convent. Want to go? _That_ she
does. She loves the place, and feels lost and strange anywhere else. She
was taken there when she was a baby, and it is all the home she has.
_She_ doesn't know they wanted to be red of her, and she wouldn't
believe it ef I was to tell her forty times. She loves them all dearly,
and prays every day to go back there. Spanish? Yes, I suppose so; she
don't know herself what she is exactly. She speaks English well though,
don't she? Yes, Sister St. Luke is her name; and a heathenish name it is
for a woman, in my opinion. _I_ call her Miss Luke. Convert her?
Couldn't any more convert her than you could convert a white gull, and
make a land-bird of him. It's his nature to ride on the water and be wet
all the time. Towels couldn't dry him--not if you fetched a thousand!"

"Our good hostess is a woman of discrimination, and sorely perplexed,
therefore, over her _protegee_" said Keith, as the two young men sought
their room, a loft under the peaked roof, which was to be their abode
for some weeks, when they were not afloat. "As a nurse she feels a
professional pride in curing, while as a Calvinist she would almost
rather kill than cure, if her patient is to go back to the popish
convent. But the little Sister looks very fragile. She will probably
save trouble all round by fading away."

"She is about as faded now as a woman can be," answered Carrington.

The two friends, or rather companions, plunged into all the phases of
the southern ocean with a broad, inhaling, expanding delight which only
a physique naturally fine, or carefully trained, can feel. George
Carrington was a vigorous young Saxon, tall and broad, feeling his life
and strength in every vein and muscle. Each night he slept his eight
hours dreamlessly, like a child, and each day he lived four hours in
one, counting by the pallid hours of other men. Andrew Keith, on the
other hand, represented the physique cultured and trained up to a high
point by years of attention and care. He was a slight man, rather
undersized, but his wiry strength was more than a match for Carrington's
bulk, and his finely cut face, if you would but study it, stood out like
a cameo by the side of a ruddy miniature in oils. The trouble is that
b