You be a game sport and I'll help you out," promised his friend. "All
hands to repel boarders! Here she comes!"

Little Miss Grouch bore down upon them with her much-maligned nose in
the air. As she maneuvered to pass, the ship, which had reached the
climax of its normal roll to port, paused, and then decided to go a
couple of degrees farther; in consequence of which the young lady fled
with a stifled cry of fury straight into the Tyro's waiting arms.
Alderson, true to his promise, extracted her, set her on her way, and
turned anxiously to his young friend.

"Did she bite you?" he inquired solicitously.

"No. You grabbed her just in time. This affair," he continued with
profound and wretched conviction, "is going to be Fate with a capital
F."

Meantime, in the seclusion of her cabin, the little lady was maturing
the plot of deep and righteous wrath. "Wait till to-morrow," she
muttered, hurling her apparel from her and diving into her bunk. "I'll
show him," she added, giving the pillow a vicious poke. "He said I was
homely! (Thump!) And red-nosed. (Plop!) And cross and ugly! (Whack!) And
he called me Little Miss Grouch. And--and _gribble_ him!" pursued the
maligned one, employing the dreadful anathema of her schoolgirl days.
"He pitied me. Pitied! Me! Just wait. I'll be seasick and have it over
with! And I'll cry until I haven't got another tear left. And then I'll
fix _him_. He's got nice, clear gray eyes, too," concluded the little
ogress with tigerish satisfaction. "Ouch! where's the bell!"

For several hours Little Miss Grouch carried out her programme
faithfully and at some pains. Then there came to her the fairy
godmother, Sleep, who banished the goblins, Grief and Temper, and worked
her own marvelous witchery upon the weary girl to such fair purpose that
she awoke in the morning transformed beyond all human, and more
particularly all masculine, believing. One look in her glass assured her
that the unfailing charm had worked.

She girded up her hair and went forth upon the war-path of her sex.

II

Second day out.
A good deal of weather of one kind and another.
Might be called a what-next sort of day.
I think I am going to like this old ocean pretty well.

SMITH'S LOG.

Where beauty is not, constancy is not. This perspicuous proverb from the
Persian (which I made up myself for the occasion) is cited in mitigation
of the Tyro'