sisted: "What's changed it?"

"You, chiefly."

"I haven't," very quietly said the girl.

"You have."

Ramsey glanced cautiously at Watson, but the pilot's eyes were a league
ahead. Hers returned to Hugh. "Wasn't it my brothers changed your
mind--the twins?"

"They helped."

She looked him over absently: "I love my brothers."

"I don't," said Hugh.

She stared again and slowly remarked: "You haven't got to.... You're
powerful queer, ain't you?"

"Not by choice."

"I'm queer. Wish I wasn't--wa'n't--weren't--but I am."

"Yes," said Hugh, "you are."

She tilted her chin, stepped to Watson's side, and called down over the
breast-board to the Gilmores, who had finished with their two pupils for
a time and had taken chairs with a newly found young married pair on the
texas roof:

"Oho, down there!"

"Oho!" the group answered.

"Do you want us to stay up here?" asked Ramsey. "'Cause if you do we'll
come right down. Or if you'd rather we'd come down we'll stay up here!"
It was a new note.

The players laughed. "It's the long dress says that," they observed to
the other pair.

"It certain'y is," replied they; which is Southern form for "probably."

XXX

PHYLLIS AGAIN

About eleven o'clock that same Sunday evening the _Votaress_, at full
speed, was in a part of the river whose remarkable character sustained
the son of John Courteney and the daughter of Gideon Hayle in the theory
that their interest in it was all that had brought them to--all that
detained them in--the unlighted pilothouse, on the visitors' bench,
beside Watson. Below, the passengers were for the most part once more in
slumber. The exhorter had loudly sung himself to sleep:

"'Mahch-ign thoo Im-madn-uedl's groudnd
Toe fahr-eh wordlds odn high.'"

Madame Hayle was in her stateroom and berth, deep in sleep under the
weight of her toils and assured by the players that Ramsey should go to
bed when they did. Basile, too, slept, but talked and tossed in his
sleep, while old Joy, sent to him by Ramsey and the Gilmores, crouched
outside his door and dozed with an ear against it. The Yazoo squire, his
children, his sister, her husband, the Vicksburgers, and they of
Milliken's Bend, purposing to be called up an hour before day to leave
the boat at their proper landings, had "retired" early, saying fond
good-bys and hoping to meet every one again. The ladies had astonished
Ramsey with kisses, given, doubtless, she thought, b