cultivate you, all right. But I've got too much to do to butt into
society. Anyway, I didn't want to run up against any critical females
looking like I do right now."

Stella smiled.

"Under certain circumstances, appearances do count then, in this
country," she remarked. "Has your Mr. Abbey got a young and be-yutiful
sister?"

"He has, but that's got nothing to do with it," Charlie retorted.
"Paul's all right himself. But their gait isn't mine--not yet. Here, you
take the wheel a minute. I want to smoke. I don't suppose you ever
helmed a forty-footer, but you'll never learn younger."

She took the wheel and Charlie stood by, directing her. In twenty
minutes they were out where the run of the sea from the south had a fair
sweep. The wind was whistling now. All the roughened surface was spotted
with whitecaps. The _Chickamin_ would hang on the crest of a wave and
shoot forward like a racer, her wheel humming, and again the roller
would run out from under her, and she would labor heavily in the trough.

It began to grow insufferably hot in the pilot house. The wind drove
with them, pressing the heat from the boiler and fire box into the
forward portion of the boat, where Stella stood at the wheel. There were
puffs of smoke when Davis opened the fire box to ply it with fuel. All
the sour smells that rose from an unclean bilge eddied about them. The
heat and the smell and the surging motion began to nauseate Stella.

"I must get outside where I can breathe," she gasped, at length. "It's