a, looking into the saloon,
saw George Lechmere preparing the tea tray to bring it up on deck.
She at once went to him.

"I did not thank you before," she said, holding out her hand; "but
I thank you now, and shall thank you all my life. You did me the
greatest service."

"I am glad, indeed, Miss Greendale, that it was so; for I know that
the Major would never have been a happy man if this had not come
about."

For the next fortnight the Osprey was cruising along the coast,
getting as far as Torquay, and returning to Cowes. Frank did not
enter her for any of the races. Lady Greendale, although a fair
sailor, grew nervous when the yacht heeled over far, and even
Bertha did not care for racing, the memory of the last race being
too fresh in her mind for her to wish to take part in another for
the present.

Chapter 11.

"That is an uncommonly pretty trading schooner, Bertha," Frank
Mallett said, as he rose from his chair to get a better look at a
craft that was passing along to the eastward. "I suppose she must
be in the fruit trade, and must just have arrived from the Levant.
I should not be surprised if she had been a yacht at one time. She
is not carrying much sail, but she is going along fast. I think
they would have done better if they had rigged her as a
fore-and-aft schooner instead of putting those heavy yards on the
foremast. That broad band of white round her spoils her appearance;
her jib boom is unusually long, and she must carry a tremendous
spread of canvas in light winds. I should think that she must be
full up to the hatches, for she is very low in the water for a
trader."

The Osprey was lying in the outside tier of yachts off Cowes. The
party that had been on board her for the regatta had broken up a
week before, and only Lady Greendale and Bertha remained on board.
The former had not been well for some days, and had had her maid
down from town as soon as the cabins were empty. It had been
proposed, indeed, that she and Bertha should return to town, but,
being unwilling to cut short the girl's pleasure, she said that she
should do better on board than in London; and, moreover, she did
not feel equal to travelling. She was attended by a doctor in
Cowes, and the Osprey only took short sails each day, generally
down to the Needles and back, or out to the Nab.

"Yes, she is a nice-looking boat," Bertha agreed, "and if her sails
were white and her ropes neat and trim, she would look like a
yac