“Oh, so we are learning to be a captain, Miss Alma?” inquired Beveridge with a wry smile.
“It would be better if more yacht-owners knew how to manage their own craft,” she informed him, with spirit.
“Yes, it might keep the understrappers in line,” agreed the man at the door.. “I apply for the position of first mate after you qualify, Captain Alma.”
“And this, you say, is, Captain Mayo?” she queried, without troubling herself to reply. Her tone was crisply matter of fact.
Beveridge blinked at her and showed the disconcerted uneasiness of a man who has intruded in business hours.
Captain Mayo, watching the white finger rapturously, noted that it was sweeping from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic Zone. “That's Love Harbor, reached through the thoroughfare of Hope,” he answered, respectfully.
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Beveridge; “the sailors who laid out that course must have been romantic.”
“Sailors have souls to correspond with their horizon, Arthur. Would you prefer such names as Cash Cove and Money-grub Channel?”
Mr. Beveridge cocked an eyebrow and stared at her eloquent back; also, he cast a glance of no great favor on the stalwart young captain of the Olenia. It certainly did not occur to Mr. Beveridge that two young folks in love were making sport of him. That Julius Marston's daughter would descend to a yacht captain would have appeared as incredible an enormity as an affair with the butler. But there was something about this intimate companionship of the chart-room which Mr. Beveridge did not relish. Instinct rather than any sane reason told him that he was not wanted.
“I'm sorry to break in on your studies, Miss Marston,” he said, a bit stiffly. “But I have been sent by your father to call you to the cabin.” Mr. Beveridge's air, his tone of protest, conveyed rather pointed hint that her responsibilities as a hostess were fully as important as her studies as a navigator.