en I tried to call her name
my lips refused to form it, and I only raised my hat and smiled.
Gladys, standing by the ship's rail, waved her hand at me. Then she
seemed to forget me entirely, and turned to a youngish-looking, stout
man at her side.

The stout man began to interest me, because Gladys had written to me
that she would be on deck this day straining her eyes to the shore
where her knight would be waiting. Now it seemed as though a brief
glance at her knight was sufficient, and that she found more charm in
this portly fellow traveller.

Ex-Judge Bundy had small side-whiskers, and always wore a large derby
and a frock coat, sometimes black, sometimes pale gray. This
youngish-looking stout man was clean shaven, and he had the ruddy skin
of the out-of-doors. His hat was brown felt, with its crown wound
around with a white pugree--a rather affected hat, but it harmonized
with his rough gray tweeds. His appearance was English; he might be, I
thought, the governor of some island colony. But when he raised
himself from the rail on which he had been leaning, slipped one hand
into the breast of his coat, and turned to address Doctor Todd,
speaking as though he were Jupiter and the doctor Mercury disguised in
dingy clerical clothes, I recognized the patron of my alma mater.

They came down the gangway one by one, the ex-judge leading; then
Gladys Todd, rather mannish in a straight-cut English suit and a sailor
hat, slung from her shoulder a camera, and nestling in one arm a
Yorkshire terrier; then Doctor Todd, unchanged, in the same clothes in
which he had sailed, for he was one of those men who could go twice
around the world and collect nothing but statistics and postcards; then
Mrs. Todd with her two greatest acquisitions in bold evidence, a
lorgnette and a caged paroquet.

For a moment I felt that I had come solely to welcome ex-Judge Bundy
home. He was first to get my hand, and he held it while he told me how
kind it was of me to take so much trouble; it was good to be home; he
was always glad to get back to America--speaking as though these
expeditions were annual events. He might have gone on and presented me
to his friends the Todds had I not disengaged myself and turned to my
fiancee with a hand outstretched.

"Look out for Blossom," she warned me, hardly more than touching my
finger-tips. "Blossom always snaps at strangers."

Blossom justified the statement by barking viciously at me.

"I am