d bu'st 'em. Those were his words. Not very elegant
language. But it's all I remember."

Before he left the chart-room Mayo took a squint at the barometer. "I'm
sorry he has ordered me in toward the coast," he said. "The glass is too
far below thirty to suit me. I think it means fog."

"But it's so clear and beautiful," she protested.

"It's always especially beautiful at sea before something bad happens,"
he explained, smiling. "And there has been a big fog-bank off to
s'uth'ard for two days. It's a good deal like life, dear. All lovely,
and then the fog shuts in!"

"But I would be happy with you in the fog," she assured him.

He glowed at her words and answered with his eyes.

She would have followed him back upon the bridge, but the steward
intercepted her. He had waited outside the chart-room.

"Mr. Marston's compliments, Miss Marston! He requests you to join him at
cards."

She pouted as she gave back Mayo's look of annoyance, and then obeyed
the mandate.

Mr. Marston was stroking his narrow strip of chin beard with thumb and
forefinger when she arrived on the quarter-deck. The men of business
were below, and he motioned to a hammock chair beside him.

"Alma, for the rest of this cruise I want you to stay back here with
our guests where you belong," he commanded with the directness of attack
employed by Julius Marston in his dealings with those of his menage.

"What do you mean, father?"

"That--exactly. I was explicit, was I not?"

"But you do not intimate that--that I have--"

"Well?" Mr. Marston believed in allowing others to expose their
sentiments before he uncovered his own.

"You don't suggest that there is anything wrong in my being on the
bridge where I enjoy myself so much. I am trying to learn something
about navigation."

"I am paying that fellow up there to attend to all that."

"And it gets tiresome back here."

"You selected your own company for the cruise--and there is Mr.
Beveridge ready to amuse you at any time."

"Mr. Beveridge amuses me--distinctly amuses me," she retorted. "But
there is such a thing as becoming wearied even of such a joke as Mr.
Beveridge."

"You will please employ a more respectful tone when you refer to that
gentleman," said her father, with severity. But he promptly fell back
into his usual mood when she came into his affairs. He was patronizingly
tolerant. "Your friend, Miss Burgess, has been joking about your sudden
devotion to navigation, Alma."