lightly, though my voice betrayed me.

"Perhaps I will," she answered.

"Perhaps!" I repeated. "That isn't any answer at all."

"Yes, then!" she said quickly, and, disengaging her hand from my
arm, ran back a few steps.

"I hear Papa's wheels," she cried over her shoulder, "and, don't
forget, Fyles, dinner at seven-thirty!"





THE GOLDEN CASTAWAYS


All I did was to pull him out by the seat of the trousers. The fat
old thing had gone out in the dark to the end of the yacht's boat-
boom, and was trying to worry in the dinghy with his toe, when
plump he dropped into a six-knot ebb tide. Of course, if I hadn't
happened along in a launch, he might have drowned, but, as for
anything heroic on my part--why, the very notion is preposterous.
The whole affair only lasted half a minute, and in five he was
aboard his yacht and drinking hot Scotch in a plush dressing-gown.
It was natural that his wife and daughter should be frightened,
and natural, too, I suppose, that when they had finished crying
over him they should cry over me. He had taken a chance with the