the
sights and sounds of the blue waters that rolled up and broke in crisp
waves on the stretch of yellow sands under the windows of the Bunk
dining-room.

Theo Carnegy had been trying her hardest for a couple of hours to add
up the housekeeping bills for the week. It was a task the girl dreaded
always, and on this particular day the figures seemed unusually
contrary and obstinate to cope with. Somehow, they utterly refused to
come straight and tally with the money she had been entrusted with to
lay out. The bristling difficulties seemed all the more unmanageable
because the sunshine that afternoon was so bright, and the wind so
fresh; while the boat that belonged to the Carnegy family lay tossing
at anchor within sight, as if inviting the girl down for the greatest
enjoyment of her life--a pull across the bay.

But there was good stuff in Theo, gentle and yielding though she
looked, with her sweet, soft face, and the fair waving hair surrounding
it. She was the one of all the Carnegys who had deliberately given her
heart to God's service. That she had done so spoke out of her clear,
steadfast eyes, and in the peaceful lines of her mouth, and more than
all, in her unflagging determination to keep on straight at what she
knew to be her duty, without allowing herself to be beguiled to this
side or to that of the narrow path. Eighteen is not a very advanced
age, even regarded from the point of view of her brothers and little
sister; and Theo, who passionately loved the sea, had a great struggle
to keep her blue eyes fixed on the tiresome figures, which would not
come right, struggle as she might to make them. It never occurred to
her to shirk a difficulty in any sense; her nature was such that she
must grapple with a duty, however distasteful, once she felt she was
appointed to fulfil it. Her mother had died when Theo, the eldest
Carnegy, was fifteen, and Queenie, the younger, only two years old.
So, already, she had been for three years her father's housekeeper. A
certain sum of money was given into her hands every week by the
captain, and there was an end of the matter as regarded him. He wanted
to hear nothing about ways and means, certainly no details regarding
household management. All such was forbidden sternly; the captain's
time was valuable, he imagined, it being dedicated to the great object
which he hoped to achieve before he died. Distinctly, the naval
battles of the world throughout the ages wer