"Ho! she did, did she?" jeered the mate. "Prove it; only don't look to
me to back you, that's all."

The other eyed him in consternation, and his manner changed.

"Don't play the fool, Ted," he said, not unkindly; "you know what Loo
is."

"Well, I'm reckoning on that," said the mate, deliberately. "I'm going
for'ard; don't let me interrupt you two. So long."

He went slowly forward, and lighting his pipe, sprawled carelessly on the
deck, and renounced the entire sex forthwith. At teatime the skipper
attempted to reverse the procedure at the other meals; but as Miss Harris
steadfastly declined to sit at the same table as the mate, his good
intentions came to naught.

He made an appeal to what he termed the mate's better nature, after Miss
Harris had retired to the seclusion of her bed-chamber, but in vain.

"She's nothing to do with me," declared the mate, majestically. "I wash
my hands of her. She's a flirt. I'm like Louisa, I can't bear flirts."

The skipper said no more, but his face was so worn that Miss Harris, when
she came on deck in the early morning and found the barge gliding gently
between the grassy banks of a river, attributed it to the difficulty of
navigating so large a craft on so small and winding a stream.

"We shall be alongside in 'arf an hour," said the skipper, eyeing her.