e were holding an earnest conversation with the grandfather
Courteney, and his eye tried to call the mate. But Ramsey, holding to
Hugh by his sleeve, gave the old gentleman a toss of her chin, a jerk of
her curls, and took the mate by a coat button. Her slim, silken figure
intercepting him, and his rude bulk smiling down into her upturned face
with a commanding yet amiable restiveness, made a picture to the players
and to the distant pilot, but much more than a picture to the captive
himself. He had thought he had been fending off the banter of a child,
but now, suddenly, this was not a child. A being was here not entirely
mundane nor quite supernal yet surpassing all his earlier knowledge of
feminine quality, something for which a year's hard thinking would not
have found him a definition. Holding his button, she spoke low:

"Please change that order." What mysterious compulsion there was in that
"please"! Her fingers tapped Hugh. "_He_ wants it changed--for me. We'll
be responsible!"

"Oh, you will!" The big man did not look at Hugh; his smile broadened on
their common captor. Her answering eyes laughed, but even in them, deep
down, he saw a pleading ardor at once so childlike, so womanly, and so
celestial that suddenly the deck seemed gone.

"Please change it! quick!" she murmured again, "for us!"

He felt an inward start and saw a vision--of the future--with those two
in the midst of it. His brightening glance went belatedly to Hugh, and
verily there was more of Hugh also than he had ever seen before, but the
crass significance of his smile was quite lost on the pair.

"Yes," insisted Ramsey, "_we_ want it changed, him and me--I mean he and
I!"

The big man's laugh drowned hers. "Oh, it's plain either way. Well, by
George! that _is_ an argument. You and him! Gad, the case is covered!
You and him has got me--by the hind leg!" He began to turn away, for
yonder, apart from commodore, judge, and bishop, but with Madame Hayle
at his side, stood the captain, giving him a sign which he promptly
passed on up to the pilot. "By the hind leg," he repeated, whereat a
titter broke from the averted face of old Joy, while Ramsey stood agape
at her success.

"They _stay_--the twins--stay _aboard_?" she asked the actors, Hugh, and
the mate in turn.

"Lord, yes!" said the latter.

On tiptoes of gratitude she had parted her lips to say more, when the
air overflowed with the long bellow of the boat. "Oh," she cried
protestin