omment, when he had passed out of hearing.

"He's such a big, red-faced, red-haired man, and his jacket is so
little. Looks as if his arms and shoulders had just been squeezed into
it by some machine. Did you notice his monstrous trousers? Enough in
them to piece out the jacket, I should think, and never be missed. All
these Numbers are dressed alike; little bit o' coaties, divided skirts
for panties, and such dudish little caps! Who wouldn't be a sailor on
the bright blue sea, if he could wear clothes cut that fashion? 'A life
on the ocean wave,'" she quoted. "'A home on the rolling deep--'"

"'Where the scattered waters rave. And the winds their revels keep. The
wi-i-inds their r-r-r-ev-el-s-s k-e-e-e-ep!'" A rich voice had caught
the burden of Molly's song and finished it with an absurd flourish.

"Now, Papa!" cried the girl, facing suddenly about. So suddenly, indeed,
that she collided with an unseen somebody, slipped on the freshly washed
boards, and fell at her victim's feet. A bugle shot out from under his
arm and banged against the deck-rail; but before he recovered that
Melvin had stooped, said "Allow me!" and helped Molly up again. Then he
lifted his cap, picked up his bugle, and proceeded on his way without so
much as another word.

Molly stared after him, blushing and mortified, shaking her tiny fist
toward his blue-uniformed back, and remarking:

"Huh! Master Melvin! I'd just declared I'd get acquainted with you but I
didn't mean to do it in quite that way!"

Maybe, too, her chagrin would have been deeper could she have seen the
amused expression of the young bugler's face; and again she observed--to
Dorothy as she supposed:

"Anyhow, if you'd been a gentleman, a real gentleman-boy, you'd have
stopped to ask if I was hurt. Huh! you're terribly 'sot up' and
top-lofty, just because you wear a uniform and toot-ti-ti-toot on little
tin-horn kind of a thing that I could play myself, if I wanted to. Don't
you think so, Papa and Dolly? Wasn't it horrid of him to trip me up that
way and make me look so silly? Why don't you answer, one of you?"

She turned the better to see "why," and found herself gazing into the
stern countenance of Captain Murray. That strict gentleman had recently
been annoyed by the "skylarking" of girlish passengers who had tried
"flirting" with his "boys" and was bent upon preventing any further
annoyance of that sort.

"Your father has gone forward to meet your ailing friend and the