mo' fas'."

"And was she?" asked the girl.

"Barely," said the grandfather. "It took years to prove it and by that
time your father had built another boat."

"The _Chevalier_!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, which beat the _Quakeress_ once or twice nearly every season until
the _Quakeress_ burned."

"Burned!" cried Ramsey, while Hugh, stirred to rise, yet remained. "Was
it the _Quakeress_ that--?" But the old man was telling earlier history
and she sank repiningly in her seat. "You're going backward," she softly
whined.

"In 'sixteen," he said, "I built the _Huntress_, and----"

"We already know about that," sighed Ramsey, bracing her feet in old
Joy's hands. "I know it from old nursie."

"Ramsey!" murmured her mother.

"In 'seventeen," said the chronicler, "Miss Ramsey's grandfather built
the _Hunter_. In 'twenty he built the _Charioteer_----"

"Ain't we ever going to hear about the burning?" laughingly whimpered
the girl, but the narrator kept on:

"In 'twenty-one I built the _Shepherdess_----"

Ramsey all at once revived. "And did the _Shepherdess_ outrun the
_Charioteer_?"

"A trifle, yes."

"Humph!" she said to herself, and twice again, on a higher key and with
a grimace at Hugh, "humph!"

"But in 'twenty-five the _Charioteer_ was run into and sunk, and the
Hayle boat that came next," continued the historian, "was the best ever
seen till then on these waters, of the hundred and sixty-five steamers
launched."

"Yes," said Madame Hayle, "and the firz' boat what my 'usband was
captain."

Ramsey started wildly. "The _Admiral_!" she cried at Hugh. She whisked
round on his grandfather. "And then--to beat the _Admiral_--you
built----?"

"My son built--the _Abbess_."

"And did the _Abbess_ beat the _Admiral_?"

"Not for a long time. But in 'thirty-three the _Conqueror's_ very first
run broke the _Abbess's_ record."

But madame was not to be outdone in generosity. "Ah, yes," she cried,
"but that same day the _Quakerezz_ she beat the _Conqueror_!" At which
the teased Ramsey, suddenly seeing that all this was but a roundabout
peacemaking where she could discern no strife, laughed herself so limp
that she all but tumbled into old Joy's lap.

"That's where we began!" she commented.

"True," said the old man to her mother, "but in 'thirty-eight came your
husband's _Chevalier_----"

"Came--yes! only to get beat racing yo'"--the name eluded her----

"_Ambassadress_," prompted Ramsey. "Everybody knows abou