"There won't be room enough in this schooner much longer
for me and for you."

Launcelot Linzie had his reasons (apparently) for declining to let his
host offend him on any terms whatever.

"Thank you!" he rejoined, in a tone of satirical good humor. "It isn't
easy to keep my place on board your vessel. I can't help presuming
to enjoy myself as if I was the owner. The life is such a new one--to
_me!_ It's so delightfully easy, for instance, to wash yourself here.
On shore it's a complicated question of jugs and basins and tubs; one is
always in danger of breaking something, or spoiling something. Here you
have only to jump out of bed, to run up on deck, and to do this!"

He turned, and scampered to the bows of the vessel. In one instant he
was out of his night-gown, in another he was on the bulwark, in a third
he was gamboling luxuriously in sixty fathoms of salt-water.

Turlington's eyes followed him with a reluctant, uneasy attention as
he swam round the vessel, the only moving object in view. Turlington's
mind, steady and slow in all its operations, set him a problem to be
solved, on given conditions, as follows:

"Launcelot Linzie is fifteen years younger than I am. Add to that,
Launcelot Linzie is Natalie Graybrooke's cousin. Given those two
advantages--Query: Has he taken Natalie's fancy?"

Turning that question slowly over and over in his mind, Richard
Turlington seated himself in a corner at the stern of the vessel. He
was still at work on the problem, when the young surgeon returned to his
cabin to put the finishing touches to his toilet. He had not reached the
solution when the steward appeared an hour later and said, "Breakfast is
ready, sir!"

They were a party of five round the cabin table.

First, Sir Joseph Graybrooke. Inheritor of a handsome fortune made by
his father and his grandfather in trade. Mayor, twice elected, of a
thriving provincial town. Officially privileged, while holding that
dignity, to hand a silver trowel to a royal personage condescending to
lay a first stone of a charitable edifice. Knighted, accordingly, in
honor of the occasion. Worthy of the honor and worthy of the occasion.
A type of his eminently respectable class. Possessed of an amiable, rosy
face, and soft, silky white hair. Sound in his principles; tidy in his
dress; blessed with moderate politics and a good digestion--a harmless,
healthy, spruce, speckless, weak-minded old man.

Secondly, Miss Lavinia Graybrooke,