“I think you are getting a bully tan,” she said, scrutinizing him closely; “most men get a red nose or else they get all speckled around the edges.  Yours looks like a nice crust on an apple pie.”

“I do tan rather decently,” he said; “but you haven’t told me what you think.”

“What about?”

“About my liking you too much.”

“I think the captain exaggerated.”

“He couldn’t exaggerate that.”

“But how can you like me when I’m all wrong?”

“I like you because of your possibilities.  You’ve probably never met any one before who understood you as I do.  Quite extraordinary the way you’ve improved since you came on board.”

“And you’ve got fourteen days more to work on me!  Do you think anybody will recognize me when I get back to Wyoming?”

“Now you are chaffing!” complained Percival.  “You never take me seriously.”

“Then you want me to be serious, and believe everything you say?”

He paused in awed contemplation of the direful consequences if she should, but for the life of him he couldn’t stop.

“I want you to believe me,” he said tenderly, “when I say that you’ve been most awfully sweet, and that I wouldn’t give half a sovereign for any other girl’s chances if you were within ten miles.  I want you to know that I consider you the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, and the most—­”

Bobby tightened the rope about her waist.

“It’s time for me to be going,” she exclaimed in mock alarm, “If you keep on saying things like that, I may furnish another scalp to that collection you were telling me about.  I don’t dare stay another minute.”

Neither did Percival.  He followed her down the ladder as if he had been escaping from quicksands.

That night the crow’s-nest was added to the prow on the list of places about a ship which the captain felt young ladies should stay away from.

[Illustration:  “You will have to join the crowd.” suggested Bobby when Percival complained of not seeing her as often as he wished]

“You will have to join the crowd,” suggested Bobby when Percival complained of not seeing her as often as he wished.  “We sing up on the boat-deck every night, and now the moon is up, it’s perfectly gorgeous.”

But Percival’s abhorrence of crowds made him hold out resolutely until the day before they were to land in Japan.  Everybody was making plans for the few days to be spent in port, and small parties were being formed to leave the steamer at Yokohama and join it three days later at Kobe.  Percival was annoyed because the steamer had to stop at all.  Any interruption in the present routine was a nuisance.  He vacillated between the inconvenience of going ashore and the stupidity of remaining on board.  An invitation from Mrs. Weston to join her party, and an insistent demand from Bobby Boynton, decided him.  He made his preparations accordingly.