e
since half tide and there's nothing doing. Somebody's in there chewing
red tape, but I don't calculate to let anybody else have a turn at it
until I get my bit wound up an' tied in a knot. Now don't tell me you've
got business in there?"

"We want to find out something."

"Well, when ye find it, it won't be what ye want," asserted the captain
gloomily. "It never is in these Dago countries." He motioned his own
boat aside from the landing. "If ye want to go inside and set on a
chair," he suggested, "I'll not hender ye. I like the water best myself.
I hope your business will stand waiting."

"To everybody but ourselves," said Peter. "You see," he caught the
permission lightly from Miss Dassonville's eyes, "we want to get
married."

"Ho!" said the captain, chirking up. "I could 'a' told ye that the fust
time I laid eyes on ye. But I'll tell ye this: ye can't do nothing in a
hurry in this country. The only place where a man can do things up as
soon as he thinks of 'em is on the blue water. We don't have red tape on
shipboard, I can tell you. The skipper's the law and the government."

"Could you marry people?"

"Well, I ain't to say in the habit of it, but it's the law that I
could."

"Then if we get tangled up with the consul," said Peter, "we'll have to
fall back on you," and they took it as an excellent piece of fooling
which they were later to come back to as a matter of serious resort.

"Of course," said the consul, "I could marry you and it would be legal
if you chose to count it so at home, but if you are thinking of taking a
house here and of making an extended residence I shouldn't advise it. As
to Captain Dunham's suggestion, it's not wholly a bad one. Not being in
Italy, the Italians can't take exception to it, and if it is properly
witnessed and recorded at home it ought to stand."

They couldn't of course take it in all at once that they were simply to
sail out there into the ethereal blueness and to come back from it with
the right to live together. However, it made for a great unanimity of
opinion as they talked it over on the way home, that, since so much was
lacking from Peter's marriage that he had dreamed went to it, and so
much more had come into Savilla's than she had dared to imagine, it
mattered very little what else was added or left out.

"I suppose," suggested Miss Dassonville, "Mrs. Merrithew will think it
dreadful." But as it turned out Mrs. Merrithew thought very well of it.

"On