"Ambassadress," prompted Ramsey. "Everybody knows about that—'way back in the country—even the dates. The Ambassadress beat the Chevalier, the Autocrat beat the Ambassadress, the Empress beat the Autocrat, the Regent beat the Empress, te tum, te tum, te tum! Didn't the Quakeress ever burn up, after all?"
"Ramsey——"
"Oh, well! this forever sitting silent! I——!"
"Ramsey!——"
X
PERIL
Ramsey clutched the old man's arm, pressed curls and brow against it, and laughed in a rillet of pure silver.
Hugh bore it, sitting silent, while the great boat, so humanly alive and aglow in every part, ceaselessly breathed above and quivered below, and the ruffling breeze as ceaselessly confirmed her unflagging speed. The mere "catalogue of the ships" had lighted in him a secret glow that persisted. In his roused imagination the long pageant of the rival steamers still moved on through the rudely thronging, ever-multiplying fleet of the boundless valley's yearly swelling commerce, ocean-distant from all disparaging contrasts of riper empires; moved, yeasting, ruffling, through forty years of a civilization's genesis, each new boat, Hayle or Courteney, more beautifully capable than her newest senior, and each, in her time and degree, as cloud-white by day, as luminous by night, and as rife with human purpose and human hazards as this incomparable Votaress.
The girl's mirth faded. From behind the four a quiet tread drew near. From another quarter came two other steps, lighter yet more assertive. The one was John Courteney's; the two, that halted farther away, meant again the twins.