sat before a table seriously engaged with his
accounts. For it was "steamer night,"--as that momentous day of
reckoning before the sailing of the regular mail steamer was briefly
known to commercial San Francisco,--and Mr. Nott was subject at such
times to severely practical relapses. A swinging light seemed to bring
into greater relief that peculiar encased casket-like security of the
low-timbered, tightly-fitting apartment, with its toy-like utilities of
space, and made the pretty oval face of Rosey Nott appear a
characteristic ornament. The sliding door of the cabin communicated
with the main deck, now roofed in and partitioned off so as to form a
small passage that led to the open starboard gangway, where a narrow,
inclosed staircase built on the ship's side took the place of the
ship's ladder under her counter, and opened in the street.

A dash of rain against the window caused Rosey to lift her eyes from
her book.

"It's much nicer here than at the ranch, father," she said coaxingly,
"even leaving alone its being a beautiful ship instead of a shanty; the
wind don't whistle through the cracks and blow out the candle when
you're reading, nor the rain spoil your things hung up against the
wall. And you look more like a gentleman sitting in his own--ship--you
know, looking over his bills and getting ready to give his orders."

Vague and general as Miss Rosey's compliment was, it had its full
effect upon her father, who was at times dimly conscious of his
hopeless rusticity and its incongruity with his surroundings. "Yes," he
said awkwardly, with a slight relaxation of his aggressive attitude;
"yes, in course it's more bang-up style, but it don't pay--Rosey--it
don't pay. Yer's the Pontiac that oughter be bringin' in, ez rents go,
at least three hundred a month, don't make her taxes. I bin thinkin'
seriously of sellin' her."

As Rosey knew her father had experienced this serious contemplation on
the first of every month for the last two years, and cheerfully ignored
it the next day, she only said, "I'm sure the vacant rooms and lofts
are all rented, father."

"That's it," returned Mr. Nott thoughtfully, plucking at his bushy
whiskers with his fingers and thumb as if he were removing dead and
sapless incumbranees in their growth, "that's just what it is--them's
ez in it themselves don't pay, and them ez haz left their goods--the
goods don't pay. The feller ez stored them iron sugar kettles in the
forehold,