glitter of the Californian skies.  Sometimes, in her isolation, the long, cylindrical vault she inhabited seemed, like some vast sea-shell, to become musical with the murmurings of the distant sea.  So completely had it taken the place of the usual instincts of feminine youth that she had forgotten she was pretty, or that her dresses were old in fashion and scant in quantity.  After the first surprise of admiration her father’s lodgers ceased to follow the abstracted nymph except with their eyes,—­partly respecting her spiritual shyness, partly respecting the jealous supervision of the paternal Nott.  She seldom penetrated the crowded center of the growing city; her rare excursions were confined to the old ranch at Petaluma, whence she brought flowers and plants, and even extemporized a hanging-garden on the quarter-deck.

It was still raining, and the wind, which had increased to a gale, was dashing the drops against the slanting cabin windows with a sound like spray when Mr. Abner Nott sat before a table seriously engaged with his accounts.  For it was “steamer night,”—­as that momentous day of reckoning before the sailing of the regular mail steamer was briefly known to commercial San Francisco,—­and Mr. Nott was subject at such times to severely practical relapses.  A swinging light seemed to bring into greater relief that peculiar encased casket-like security of the low-timbered, tightly-fitting apartment, with its toy-like utilities of space, and made the pretty oval face of Rosey Nott appear a characteristic ornament.  The sliding door of the cabin communicated with the main deck, now roofed in and partitioned off so as to form a small passage that led to the open starboard gangway, where a narrow, enclosed staircase built on the ship’s side took the place of the ship’s ladder under her counter, and opened in the street.

A dash of rain against the window caused Rosey to lift her eyes from her book.

“It’s much nicer here than at the ranch, father,” she said coaxingly, “even leaving alone its being a beautiful ship instead of a shanty; the wind don’t whistle through the cracks and blow out the candle when you’re reading, nor the rain spoil your things hung up against the wall.  And you look more like a gentleman sitting in his own—­ship—­you know, looking over his bills and getting ready to give his orders.”

Vague and general as Miss Rosey’s compliment was, it had its full effect upon her father, who was at times dimly conscious of his hopeless rusticity and its incongruity with his surroundings.  “Yes,” he said awkwardly, with a slight relaxation of his aggressive attitude; “yes, in course it’s more bang-up style, but it don’t pay—­Rosey—­it don’t pay.  Yer’s the Pontiac that oughter be bringin’ in, ez rents go, at least three hundred a month, don’t make her taxes.  I bin thinkin’ seriously of sellin’ her.”

As Rosey knew her father had experienced this serious contemplation on the first of every month for the last two years, and cheerfully ignored it the next day, she only said, “I’m sure the vacant rooms and lofts are all rented, father.”