"You'll be all right directly. I'm going to get you some wine, and have you lie down and rest a while when you get on some dry clothes. Oh, you don't know my name, do you?
"I am Mrs. Stansbury, and Harry Hawthorne was bringing me over to see you when you fell into the water. A mercy you wern't drowned, isn't it? You certainly would have been, only for his bravery."
Closeted in the little state-room, she continued:
"How fortunate that I brought along a little steamer trunk, expecting to spend several days with my mother in Newburgh. I can lend you an outfit, for we are almost the same size, aren't we? But I'll wager that Harry Hawthorne will not be able to borrow a suit big enough for him, and will have to remain 'in durance vile' until his own clothes are dry."
Her words proved true, and she and Geraldine did not see the handsome fireman again until just before they landed, when he joined them, looking fresh and bright, and none the worse for his ducking, excusing his absence by saying, gayly, that he had been hung over a line to dry.
His eager eyes sought Geraldine's, and he said, tenderly:
"You feel no worse for your wetting, I hope?"
"No, indeed, thanks to the coddling of Mrs. Stansbury and the other ladies, but"—and her low voice broke with grateful emotion—"how can I ever thank you enough?"
"Let my own keen joy in saving your life be my reward," he answered, lightly, but with an undercurrent of joy in his deep, musical voice, for it seemed to him that had she perished beneath the cruel, darkling waves, life would never have seemed the same to him again.