The Honorable Percival

ored. So lofty and forbidding had been his manner that no one had ventured to intrude even a casual good morning. A bachelor under thirty, with a competence of such dimension

nted with him. It was only the fear that any leniency might result in undue liberty o

wanted to read; she practised new dance-steps with the first officer when he wanted to sleep; she caused him to lift his unwilling eyes a dozen times an hour by her endless circuits of the deck. She was on terms of friendship wit

of his endurance. The canvas was down, and nothing could be seen but long vistas of slippery decks, with barefooted Chinese sailors everlastingly mopping and slopping abo

sked Percival, and his voice

o his feet; "aboot time for the f

to end there, but he felt now that he would be risking h

place?" he as

he captain's daughter is teachi

t go in on a beas

they do. Shall

ng of a ladder, coaxing a small boy to jump from the platform above. Now, on several occasions in the past Percival had met Disillusion face to face in a bathing-suit. A certain attenuated memory of the faithless Horte

tstretched arms below, he leaped. Shrieks of laughter followed as his fat little body spanked the water, and was quickly righted and deposited, gasping, but v

narrow confines of the tank. While he deplored the wretched taste of the proceeding, he had to admit that she carried it off with admirable lack of self-consc

she climbed to the crow's-nest?" as

d Perciva

nt up the rigging like a sailor. I doubt if t

to all this sort of thin

first sea-voyage. She n

id she was the ca

on a Western ranch since she was

all

obleman. Left the captain and the lassie in the lurch, and die

the girl

off some love-affair at home, I believe. But if she's as canny as

wn he suddenly encountered the laughing glance of the person under discussion. She was lazily watching him from where she floated in t

having removed from her mind the suspicion of a former encounter. But there was that in the glance that now met and held his that dispell

rm placed him in a situation at once awkward and embarrassing. He rather prided himself on never taking advantage of any tribute of admiration that might be tendered him by the less experienced of her sex. On more than one occasion in th

forced to continue this distasteful partnership memory, or else dissolve it with a casual reference to the episode

hair, still damp, was hanging about her shoulders, and she carried a bundle of bath-to

out her shoulders, and she carried a

r pardon," s

or?" sh

st what he had meant to say, but it was said, and he must go on as

smiling. While she evidently bore no resentme

traveling," he went on lame

your face anyw

move. Instead she leaned nonchalantly aga

a look half daring and half quizzical.

w did y

he only man on board who would fit 'The

olerable. He descended two more step

ver her shoulder, "I wish you'd write your grand name on my

d: he had given an inch; she had taken an ell. The crack in the shell of his pr