and Hortense in the boat, as we reached the Hermana’s gangway.  In John’s place almost any man, even Beverly Rodgers, would have either dropped a hint at the moment, or later sent me some line to the effect that the incident was, of course, “between ourselves.”  That would have been both permissible and practical; but there it was, the difference between John of Kings Port and us others; he was not practical when it came to something “between gentlemen,” as he would have said.  The finest flower of breeding blossoms above the level of the practical, and that is why you do not find it growing in the huge truck-garden of our age, save in corners where it has not yet been uprooted.  John’s silence to me was something that I liked very much, and he must have found that it was not misplaced.

The first external splash of the few that I have to narrate was a negative manifestation, and occurred at breakfast:  Juno supposed if the wedding invitations would be out later in the day.  The next splash was somewhat louder on, was at dinner, when Juno inquired of Mrs. Trevise if she had received any wedding invitation.  At tea time was very decided splashing.  No invitation had come to anybody.  Juno had called at five of the St. Michael houses and got in at none of them, and there was a rumor that the Hermana had disappeared from the harbor.  So far, none of the splashing had wet me but I now came in for a light sprinkle.

“Were you not on board that boat yesterday?” Juno inquired; and to see her look at me you might have gathered that I was suspected of sinking the vessel.

“A most delightful occasion!” I exclaimed, filling my face with a bright blankness.

“Isn’t he awful to speak that way about Sunday!” said the up-country bride.

This was a chance for the poetess, and she took it.  “To me,” she mused, “every day seems fraught with an equal holiness.”

“But I should think,” observed the Briton, “that you could knock off a hymn better on Sundays.”

All this while Juno was looking at me, and I knew it, and therefore I ate my food in a kindly sort of unconscious way, until she fired another shot at me.  “There is an absurd report that somebody fell overboard.”

“Dear me!” I laughed.  “So that is what it has grown to already!  I did go out on the boat boom, and I did drop off—­but into a boat.”

At this confession of mine the up-country bride became extraordinarily arch on the subject of the well-known hospitality of steam yachts, and for this I was honestly grateful to her; but Juno brooded still.  “I hope there is nothing wrong,” she said solemnly.