the offence that girls feel when
their elders make them the subject of comment with their contemporaries.
"Well, I'll leave you to discuss it alone. I'm going to Ellen," she
said, the young man vainly following her a few paces, with apologetic
gurgles of laughter.

"That's right," her father consented, and then he seized the opening to
speak about Ellen. "My eldest daughter is something of an invalid, but
I hope we shall have her on deck before the voyage is over. She is more
interested in those matters than her sister."

"Oh!" Mr. Breckon interpolated, in a note of sympathetic interest. He
could not well do more.

It was enough for Judge Kenton, who launched himself upon the
celebration of Ellen's gifts and qualities with a simple-hearted
eagerness which he afterwards denied when his wife accused him of it,
but justified as wholly safe in view of Mr. Breckon's calling and his
obvious delicacy of mind. It was something that such a person would
understand, and Kenton was sure that he had not unduly praised the
girl. A less besotted parent might have suspected that he had not deeply
interested his listener, who seemed glad of the diversion operated by
Boyne's coming to growl upon his father, "Mother's bringing Ellen up."

"Oh, then, I mustn't keep your chair," said the minister, and he rose
promptly from the place he had taken beside the judge, and got himself
away to the other side of the ship before the judge could frame a
fitting request for him to stay.

"If you had," Mrs. Kenton declared, when he regretted this to her, "I
don't know what I would have done. It's bad enough for him to hear you
bragging about the child without being kept to help take care of her,
or keep her amused, as you call it. I will see that Ellen is kept amused
without calling upon strangers." She intimated that if Kenton did not
act with more self-restraint she should do little less than take Ellen
ashore, and abandon him to the voyage alone. Under the intimidation he
promised not to speak of Ellen again.

At luncheon, where Mr. Breckon again devoted himself to Lottie, he and
Ellen vied in ignoring each other after their introduction, as far as
words went. The girl smiled once or twice at what he was saying to her
sister, and his glance kindled when it detected her smile. He might be
supposed to spare her his conversation in her own interest, she looked
so little able to cope with the exigencies of the talk he kept going.

When he addres