promised to play propriety for me in a party that we want to make up
aboard the yacht. The squadron won't get down from New York for a week
yet, and I've come up ahead of it so that we can have a cruise to the
Shoals and back before the races. Of course, Miss Lee, you won't fly in
the face of Fate, after this providential meeting, by refusing to join
our party; at least if you do you will make me wretched to the end of my
days. And we will try to make you comfortable on board, sir," he added,
politely, turning to Mr. Port. "I have a tolerably fair cook, and ice
isn't the only thing in the ice-chest, I assure you."

"How very kind you are, Mr. Livingstone," Dorothy hastened to say, in
order to head off her uncle's inevitable refusal. "Of course we will go,
with the greatest possible pleasure. It is very odd how things fall out
sometimes. Now only this morning I was begging Uncle Hutchinson to take
me off yachting, and he was saying how much he enjoyed being at sea, and
how he really thought that if it wasn't for his age--wasn't it absurd
of him to talk about his age? He is not old at all, the dear!--he would
have a yacht of his own. And almost before the words are fairly out of
our mouths here you drop from the clouds, or are cast up by the sea,
it's all the same thing, and give us both just what we have been longing
for. At least, Uncle Hutchinson pretended to be longing for it only in
case he could be young enough to enjoy it; but if he doesn't think he's
young now, I'd like to know what he'll call himself when he's fifty!"
And then, facing around sharply upon her uncle, Dorothy concluded: "The
idea of pretending that _you_ are too old to go yachting! Really, Uncle
Hutchinson, I am ashamed of you!"

As has been intimated, if there was any one subject upon which Mr. Port
was especially sensitive, it was the subject of his age. As the parish
register of St. Peter's all too plainly proved, he never would see sixty
again; but this awkward record was in an out-of-the-way place, and
the agreeable fiction that he advanced in various indirect ways to the
effect that he was a trifle turned of forty-seven was not likely to be
officially contradicted. And it is not impossible, so tenacious was he
upon this point, that had the official proof been produced, he would
have denied its authenticity. For it was Mr. Port's firm determination
still to figure before the world as a youngish, middle-aged man.

To say that Miss Lee delibera