"If you want me to say I'm sorry, I won't, I _won't_--I--"

"Help!" cried the Tyro. "One more of those 'won'ts' and I'm a cripple
for life."

There was a convulsive movement of the features beneath the heavy veil,
which the Tyro took to be the beginning of a smile. He was encouraged.
The two young people were practically alone now, the crowd having moved
forward for sight of a French liner sweeping proudly up the river. The
girl turned her gaze upon the injured member.

"Did I really hurt you much?" she asked, still whispering.

"Not a bit," lied the Tyro manfully. "I just made that an excuse to get
you to talk."

"Indeed!" The head tilted up, furnishing to the Tyro the distinct
moulding, under the blurring fabric, of a determined and resentful chin.
"Well, I can't talk. I can only whisper."

"Sore throat?"

"No."

"Well, it's none of my business," conceded the Tyro. "But you rather
looked as if--as if you were in trouble, and I thought perhaps I could
help you."

"I don't want any help. I'm all right." To prove which she began to cry
again.

The Tyro led her over to a deck-chair and made her sit down. "Of course
you are. You just sit there and think how all-right you are for five
minutes and then you _will_ be all right."

"But I'm not going back. Never! Never!! _Nev-ver!!!_"

"Certainly not," said the Tyro soothingly.

"You speak to me as if I were a child!"

"So you are--almost."

"That's what they all think at home. That's why I'm--I'm running away
from them," she wailed, in a fresh access of self-commiseration.

"Running away! To Europe?"

"Where did you think this ship was bound for?"

"But--all alone?" queried the other, thunderstruck.

"All alone?" She contrived to inform her whisper with a malicious
mimicry of his dismay. "I suppose the girls you know take the whole
family along when they run away. Idiot!"

"Go ahead!" he encouraged her. "Take it out on me. Relieve your
feelings. You can't hurt mine."

"I haven't even got a maid with me," mourned the girl. "She got left.
F-f-father will have a fu-fu-fit!"

"Father was practicing for it, according to my limited powers of
observation, when last seen."

"What! Where did you see him?"

"Wasn't it father who was giving the commendable imitation of a whirling
dervish on the pier-head?"

"Heavens, no! That's the--the man I'm running away from."

"The plot thickens. I thought it was your family you were eluding."

"Everybody! Every