helm and taken in hand my job with a good deal of credit to Himself and
confounded little to me. But it's my watch from now on. I wish your
mother were here, sweetheart. You need her now," and Neil Stewart again
drew the young girl into his strong, circling arm. "I'd resign tomorrow
if--if--well, when I resign I want four stripes at least on my sleeve to
leave you as a memory in the years to come. Now show me the ropes. I'm a
stranger on board my own ship."

For an hour Peggy did the honors of the beautiful home, Jerome, the old
butler, who had been "Massa Neil's body servant" before he entered the
Academy at eighteen, where body servants had no place, hovering around,
solicitous of his master's comfort; Harrison making a hundred and one
excuses to come into the room; Mammy Lucy, with the privileges of an old
servant making no excuses at all but bobbing in and out whenever she saw
fit.

Luncheon was soon served in the wonderful old dining-room, one side of
which was entirely of glass giving upon a broad piazza overlooking Round
Bay. From this room the view was simply entrancing and Neil Stewart, as
he sat at the table at which Peggy was presiding with such grace and
dignity, felt that life was certainly worth while when one could look up
and encounter a pair of such soft brown eyes regarding him with such
love and joy, and see such ripe, red lips part in such carefree, happy
smiles.

"Jerome, don't forget Daddy Neil's sauce.

"Yes, missie, lamb. I knows--I knows. Cynthy, she done got it made to de
very top-notch pint," answered Jerome, hurrying away upon noiseless feet
and in all his immaculate whiteness from the crown of his white woolly