.

[Illustration: I RECOGNIZE THE BLONDE DIVINITY. HER EYES ARE CLOSED, HER
HAT ON ONE EAR, AND SHE IS WRAPPED LIKE A MUMMY.]

Of course there's always the exception: the rosy-cheeked, plaid-coated
creature who walks the deck without a hat, and lets the ringlets blow
about her face. Her hair curls with the dampness. Her colour heightens
with the seas and winds. You might suspect her of a golden scaly tail
and fins, excepting that you see her tiny, well-shod feet as they
step out firmly on the deck. They never step alone. There are lots of
other feet, and larger, that delight in stepping with them. The very
wind that loves her wafts her friends--wafts them with tobacco-smoke, as
like as not:

"I beg your pardon, does this smoke trouble you?"

"Oh, no! Not in the least.
My brothers all smoke. I {Cigar
adore the smell of a good {Pipe
Keep right on, _please_." {Cigarette

"Thanks awfully. Perhaps you'd like to walk around to the other side and
see the lightship?"

"Oh, _thanks!_" She thanks him for the lightship as if it were a bunch
of roses.

And so they walk, and walk, and walk, and walk--she near the rail, he
careering on beside her, hurdling over the foot-rests of the rows of
steamer-chairs, and tripping now and then upon the feet extending from
them. And sometimes she sits down and shows him magazines which he has
seen before, and he leans over very far, and points to things, and she
points, too, and his hand touches hers, and he begs pardon, and she
excuses him, of course, and laughs--and little locks of hair have
touched his cheek. And then they walk again, and then she feeds him
chocolates (sent by some poor chap who had to stay behind) with her own
rosy finger-tips, and then another light looms up ahead, all golden, and
then--How short the voyage has seemed!

Ah, feet that twinkle, cheeks that hold your roses when the world is
tottering and green! Ah, youth! Ah, blowing curls! Ah, Delta Kappa
Epsilon! Ah, Alpha and Omega! Ah, snapshots, shuffleboard, and sea! Ah,
confidences beside a life-boat on the upper deck!... "And I was taken
with you from the second that I saw you!"

"And I with _you----_!"

"_Were_ you--honestly----?"

"Yes, dear----!"

"_Dearest_----!"

Of course we didn't overhear them; it was the third life-boat on the
port side of the ship that overheard, as it has overheard so many other
times on other voyages.

As for ourselves, we were not even up there,