k against."

"You have evidently sailed a boat before."

"I'm on the water a good deal every summer. Father gave me a knockabout
two years ago, and I've had lots of fun in her. It isn't always as
simple on Narragansett Bay as it appears to be here."

"You seem to be pretty good at anything you undertake."

"Oh, no!" Merry laughed deprecatingly. "I play at everything, and
perhaps that is why I am not particularly good at anything. Phil says I
have more courage than judgment."

"That sounds like jealousy! I'll wager you can beat him in most games,
unless he is better than the youngsters I know."

"I can, in some," she admitted, "but Phil is a great oarsman. He's on
the crew at Harvard, you know," she added with a pride which amused
Cosden; "he will probably row against Yale again this year. But Phil
doesn't go at other sports as hard as I do. I have to go at them hard. I
simply must be doing something. Mother calls it restlessness and Father
says it's because I haven't grown up yet. Perhaps they are both right;
but whatever it is I just can't help it."

"I hope you will never grow up, if to lose your enthusiasm is the
penalty."

"Then you don't think it's unwomanly?" she asked, grateful for his
approval.

"On the contrary," Cosden asserted. "It is enthusiasm which wins in
everything to-day. Confidence in one's self, belief in one's subject,
enthusiasm in its presentation; that is my daily creed."

"But you are a man," Merry protested. "You have made your success, so
you have a right to have confidence in yourself--"

"My success is only partially complete," Cosden interrupted, quick to
seize the easy opening. "When I left college I undertook to make money:
I did make it. Then I undertook to compel that money to earn me a place
in the business world: I made that dream come true. Now I have reached
the third effort. My money is of value only so far as it secures for me
what I want, and a part of what I want I can't get alone: that is a
home, with the right woman in it. A man can make his clubs and all that
sort of thing by himself, but it takes a woman to secure for him the
social life which he ought to have. I'm looking for that woman now, and
I intend to get her."

A smile crossed Merry's face as Cosden concluded his matter-of-fact
statement. "You are demonstrating your daily creed," she said.

"Of course I am. If I didn't you would accuse me of inconsistency."

"Have you found the woman you--intend to ge