ready to amuse you at any time.”
“Mr. Beveridge amuses me—distinctly amuses me,” she retorted. “But there is such a thing as becoming wearied even of such a joke as Mr. Beveridge.”
“You will please employ a more respectful tone when you refer to that gentleman,” said her father, with severity. But he promptly fell back into his usual mood when she came into his affairs. He was patronizingly tolerant. “Your friend, Miss Burgess, has been joking about your sudden devotion to navigation, Alma.”
“Nan Burgess cannot keep her tongue still, even about herself.”
“I know, but I do not intend to have you give occasion even for jokes. Of course, I understand. I know your whims. You are interested, personally, in that gold-braided chap about as much as you would be interested in that brass thing where the compass is—whatever they call it.”
“But he's a gentleman!” she cried, her interest making her unwary. “His grandfather was—”
“Alma!” snapped Julius Marston. His eyes opened wide. He looked her up and down. “I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly, I am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's grandfather was. You are my daughter—and you keep off that bridge!”
The men of business were coming up the companion-way, and she rose and hurried to her stateroom.
“I don't dare to meet Nan Burgess just now,” she told herself. “Friendships can be broken by saying certain things—and I feel perfectly capable of saying just those things to her at this moment.”
In the late afternoon the Olenia, the shore-line looming to starboard, shaped her course to meet and pass a big steamer which came rolling down the sea with a banner of black smoke flaunting behind her.
The fog which Captain Mayo had predicted was coming. Wisps of it trailed over the waves—skirmishers sent ahead of the main body which marched in mass more slowly behind.
A whistling buoy, with its grim grunt, told all mariners to 'ware Razee Reef, which was lifting its jagged, black bulk against the sky-line. With that fog coming,
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