wear;
I've got a lot of old duds in my locker here. What are you laughing at,
Allan Gerard?"

"The responsible man's burden. Never mind me, go on with your rescue."

"I should like to throw something at you."

"Haven't you got enough on your hands?"

The raillery struck some note in the man's pride. He looked from Gerard
to Corrie, who was bringing an armful of assorted clothing, with a
reawakening defiance not so much evil as primitive.

"You couldn't have put it over me so easy," he announced sombrely, "if
I'd had the feed I bet you got this morning."

The garments escaped Corrie's grasp.

"Feed? You're hungry?"

"What you think I was sleepin' in your dinky boat for, if I had the
price of anythin'? It had a blanket in it an' was better than the open,
that's why."

"Why didn't you say so," Corrie stormed at him hotly. "Get into those
clothes and come upstairs. Or, no; I'll bring it down, stay there."

It was an elaborate lunch-hamper that presently was brought in and set
down.

"Eat it," was the concise direction. "That vacuum-bottle is full of hot
coffee; drink it. For Heaven's sake stop shivering--_why_ couldn't you
speak? Rupert is coming, Gerard. I heard the motor-horn down the road."

Gerard discreetly had turned his back to the scene, reading a
last-season bulletin of yacht racing that was fixed to the wall at the
end of the room.

"You want to start?" he interpreted, as Corrie joined him.

"Well--I hope you won't mind, but I don't see how we can. I have got to
stay here until that chattering, shaking----"

"'Brimstone pig,'" supplied Gerard, with a recollection of the
unforgettable _Mrs. Smallweed_.

"Thanks. Until he finishes and can leave, for the steward will put him
out if he finds him here alone."

"That cannot be long."

"No, but," he hesitated, engagingly confused. "But we are miles from a
restaurant, you know, and I had to feed him somehow, and there wasn't
anything except our luncheon that I had sent over for the trip. So I
suppose we had better drive home and get some eats there. It is a shabby
way to treat you, all right, after bringing you out."

Gerard dropped his hand on the other's shoulder, his laughing eyes very
kind.

"Corrie Rose, how many times a year do you throw your offenders
overboard, and give them your own lunch to make up for it?" he
challenged.

There was no lack of perception in Corrie; he recognized both the
innuendo and its truth.

"About every day,"