Anthea Merril stood at the tiller outlined against the heave of sea, for the night was warm and she was dressed in white. Nellie Austerly sat on a locker in the cockpit, and her father on the saloon skylights with a cigar in his hand. Valentine lay on the deck not far away, and Jimmy a little further forward.
"I suppose we will be in soon after daylight, and I'm sorry," said Nellie Austerly. "It has been an almost perfect cruise in spite of the bad weather. Don't you wish we were going back again, instead of home, Anthea?"
Jimmy roused himself to attention, for he would very much have liked to hear Miss Merril's real thoughts on the matter; but she laughed.
"I don't think it would be very much use if I did," she said. "One can't go sailing always—and if you feel that that is a pity, you can think of the rain and the wind."
"Ah!" said Nellie Austerly, "one has to bear so much of them everywhere. Sometimes one wonders whether life is all gray days and rain; but this trip has made me better, and, perhaps, if Mr. Valentine will take us, we will go back next year and revel once more in the sea and the sunshine—we really had a good deal of the latter."
Jimmy saw his comrade make a little abrupt movement, and guessed what he was thinking, for he too realized that before another year Nellie Austerly would in all probability have slipped away from the sad gray weather to the shores of the glassy sea where there is eternal radiance.
Then Austerly looked around, and his observation was very matter-of-fact, as usual.
"If circumstances are propitious, I should be glad to arrange it," he said. "I certainly think Mr. Valentine has done everything he could for us. Indeed, we owe it largely to him that this has been such a pleasant trip."
He appeared to expect some expression of approval, and Anthea laughed. "Of course. It's only unfortunate he couldn't arrange the weather."
"I wonder," said Nellie reflectively, "why you both leave Jimmy out?"