"And never a word from the admiral?"
"Never a word."
"H-m-ph! Don't you suppose—"
"Suppose what, fat Reggie? D' y' mean to hint at conspiracy between a rear-admiral of the United States Navy and an enlisted man—a yeoman? Why, Reggie!"
"Of course not. But nothing more from anybody? Not from Washington, either?"
"Nothing, inquisitive child. But there's an old flat-footed friend of mine in the department—and he, whenever he writes me, never forgets to mention that every once in a while the chief clerk, or somebody or other in his division, is sure to look out the window and across the street at the White House grounds, as if trying to remember something; and whenever he takes a particularly long look he is always sure to turn around and say to the man at the nearest desk, 'What d' y' s'pose ever became of that hose-pipe spook used to haunt this place?' And the man at the nearest desk he'll look up and nibble at the end of his pen-holder, or maybe he'll get up and have a look out of the window at the [pg 43] Cabinet playing tennis, and after a while he'll say: 'That's so; I wonder what ever did become of that? But'—maybe another look across at the tennis court—'that'll turn up again, no fear.'
"But it won't," concluded the flag yeoman, with a smile we could have buried one of his tin letter-files in; "for we were two hundred miles out of Hong-kong at that time, steaming 14.6 miles an hour through the China Sea, and you know it's good and deep there. And now"—he rolled flat on his back, balanced his neck on the head-rest under the bulkhead light, and his fat book on his chest—"now I'm not advising anybody, and particularly not you, Fatty, but that's the way a competent yeoman, with a little advice from a couple of old shipmates, laid that hose-pipe ghost of other days. But mind, I'm not telling you to go and do anything like that."
"No, of course not," says our captain's yeoman, and rubs his fat chin. "Of course not."
"But if you do," says Dalton, and sets his head sideways to see how Reginald was taking it—"if you do, you'd make a hit with your skipper, you betcher—only he'd never tell you."
"Why wouldn't he, if he liked it?"