He knew, for he had been trying his best with his own.

It was quite likely that Dab Kinzer's rowing, and all that sort of
thing, had developed in him greater strength of muscle than even he
himself was aware of; but for all that he went home with his very ears
tingling.

"Could she have thought me ill-bred or impertinent?" he muttered to
himself.

Thought? About him?

Poor Dab Kinzer! Annie Foster had so much else to think of just then;
for she was compelled to go over, for Ford's benefit, the whole story of
her tribulations at her uncle's, and the many rudenesses of Joe Hart and
his brother Fuz.

"They ought to be drowned," said Ford indignantly.

"In ink," added Annie. "Just as they drowned my poor cuffs and collars."

CHAPTER X

A CRUISE IN "THE SWALLOW."

"Look at Dabney Kinzer," said Jenny Walters to her mother, in church,
the next morning. "Did you ever see anybody's hair as smooth as that?"

Smooth it was, certainly; and he looked, all over, as if he had given
all the care in the world to his personal appearance. How was Annie
Foster to guess that he had gotten himself up so unusually on her
account? She did not guess it; but when she met him at the church-door,
after service, she was careful to address him as "Mr. Kinzer," and that
made poor Dabney blush to his very eyes.

"There!" he exclaimed: "I know it."

"Know what?" asked Annie.

"Know what you're thinking."

"Do you, indeed?"

"Yes: you think I'm like the crabs."

"What _do_ you mean?"

"You think I was green enough till you spoke to me, and now I'm boiled
red in the face."

Annie could not help laughing,--a little, quiet, Sunday-morning sort of
a laugh; but she was beginning to think her brother's friend was not a
bad specimen of a Long Island "country boy."

She briskly turned away the small remains of that conversation from
crabs and their color; but she told her mother, on their way home, she
was sure Dabney would be a capital associate for Ford.

That young gentleman was tremendously of the same opinion. He had come
home, the previous evening, from a long conference with Dab, brimful of
the proposed yachting cruise; and his father had freely given his
consent, much against the inclinations of Mrs. Foster.

"My dear," said the lawyer, "I feel sure a woman of Mrs. Kinzer's
unusual good sense would not permit her son to go out in that way if she
did not feel safe about him. He has been brought up to it, you know