"Who are the other officers?" asked Edith, from the sofa.
"Oh, there's Ensign Dobson—he isn't very lively, but he's nice; Dr. Cutler, who will talk with papa all the time about quarantine regulations and the Red Cross; and Mr. Ross, the paymaster, I suppose. Oh, and I believe there's a little midshipman from the Naval Academy—I don't know his name, for he has just been assigned to the ship."
Wynnie's eyes danced. "He'll be dreadfully bashful, I know. I shall consider it my duty to entertain him, poor little thing!"
The dinner proved a great success. Larkin, of course, kept his end of the table in a shout, while young Starr was by no means too bashful to appreciate Ethelwyn's fun. "Doc." Liddon talked politics with the civilian reporter, navy-yard gossip with Mrs. Commandant, international complications with her husband, and nonsense, flavoured with dry wit, with Edith. Dobson told the story of his rescue from the hazing party at the Academy, and brought down the house as he described his position when Norman Holmes and Dave Rexdale came on the scene—standing on his head, with his tormentors pouring cold water down his trousers-leg.
Then Dave himself was called on for the tale of his boat-wreck on the lonely Desertas, near Madeira, when he and "Sandy" barely escaped with their lives.
The cabin of the Osprey was prettily decorated with ferns and flowers, and there was little to suggest warfare, the roar of cannon, the cries of the fierce combatants, in its dainty appointments. It fell about, however, that, as was natural, the conversation at length turned to the navies of the great nations, and, in comparison, that of the United States.
"Where do we stand, among the other Powers—in point of naval strength, I mean?" asked some one.
The commandant had excused himself on the plea of important duty, and had returned to his office on the Yard. Oddly enough, it was the civilian that answered the question, before any one else could recall the figures.
"We are fifth in rank," said Larkin, helping himself to a banana. "If we carry out our present rather indefinite plans we shall be, by 1908, the third in strength, possibly the second, with only England ahead of us."