Bertha looked with a rather puzzled face at the fleet of yachts.
"That is," she said, confidently, after a moment's hesitation, pointing to one towards which the boat was at the moment heading.
Frank Mallett laughed.
"Really I should have thought, Miss Greendale, that, although making every allowance for feminine vagueness as to boats, you would have known the yacht you christened a month ago; or, at any rate, would not have mistaken a schooner for a yawl, after the patient explanation I gave you on your last visit as to the different rigs. That is the Osprey, a hundred yards lower down."
"Oh, yes, I remember now, that when there is a little mast standing on the stern it is a yawl. These things seem very simple to you, Major Mallett, but they are very puzzling to women, who know nothing about them. Now, I venture to say, that if I were to show you six different materials for frocks, and were to tell you all their names, you would know nothing about them when I showed them to you a month afterwards.
"I suppose the gentleman on board is Colonel Severn."
"Yes, he came down by the train before yours. I thought it better that he should do so, as in the first place, he did not know any of you, and in the next, as you see, we are pretty closely packed as it is."
"What is that flag at the masthead?" Lady Greendale asked. "Bertha said that your flag was going to have an eagle on it."
"That is on my racing flag. Let me impress upon you, ladies, that a racing flag is a square flag, and that that is not a flag at all, but a burgee. Every club has its burgee; as you see, that is a white cross on a blue ground with a crown in the centre, and is the burgee of the Royal Thames, of which I was elected a member last month.
"Here we are. Properly, I ought to be on board first, but I am too wedged in. You and Wilson had better go up first; that will give more room for the ladies to move."