hey're _grands partis_, you see. I hate to see clever girls wasting
themselves on society, waiting and waiting, and we fellows swimming
about just like fish around a hook that isn't baited properly."

Charley raised himself upon his elbow.

"You don't mean to tell me, Ned, that you have matrimonial intentions?"

"Oh, no! Still, why not? We've all got to come to it some day, I
suppose."

"Not yet, though. It is a sacrifice we can escape for some years yet."

"Yes--of course--some years; but we may begin to look about us a bit.
I'm, aw, I'm six and twenty, you know."

"And I'm very near that. I suppose a fellow can't put off the yoke too
long. After thirty chances aren't so good. I don't know, by Jove! but
what we ought to begin thinking of it."

"But it _is_ a sacrifice. Society must lose a fellow, though, one time
or another. And I don't believe we will ever do better than we can now."

"Hardly, I suspect."

"And we're keeping other fellows away, maybe. It is a shame!"

Thomas ran his line in rapidly, with nothing on the hook.

"Cap'n Hull," he said, gravely, "I had the biggest kind of a fish then
I'm sure; but d'rectly I went to pull him in, sir, he took and let go."

"Yaas," muttered the taciturn skipper, "the biggest fish allers falls
back inter the warter."

"I've been thinking a little about this matter, too," said Charlie,
after a pause, "and I had about concluded we ought to pair off. But I'll
be confounded if I know which is the best! They're both nice girls."

"There isn't much choice," Ned replied. "If they were as different, now,
as you and me, I'd take the blonde, of course, aw, and you'd take the
brunette. But Hattie Chapman's eyes are blue, and her hair isn't black,
you know, so you can't call her dark, exactly."

"No more than Laura is exactly light. Her hair is brown more than
golden, and her eyes are hazel. Hasn't she a lovely complexion, though?
By Jove!"

"Better than Hattie's. Yet I don't know but Hattie's features are a
little the best."

"They are. Now, honest, Ned, which do you prefer? Say either; I'll take
the one you don't want. I haven't any choice."

"Neither have I."

"How shall we settle?"

"Aw, throw for it?"

"Yes. Isn't there a backgammon board forward, in that locker, Thomas?"

The board was found and the dice produced.

"The highest takes which?"

"Say Laura Thurston."

"Very good; throw."

"You first."

"No. Go on."

Charlie threw with about the sam