“Think of the filthy coals, and the infernal vibration, and leave your beautiful schooner as she is.  We are out for a holiday.  Let the wind and the sea take a holiday too.”

Pronouncing those words of remonstrance, a slim, nimble, curly-headed young gentleman joined Richard Turlington on deck, with his clothes under his arm, his towels in his hand, and nothing on him but the night-gown in which he had stepped out of his bed.

“Launcelot Linzie, you have been received on board my vessel in the capacity of medical attendant on Miss Natalie Graybrooke, at her father’s request.  Keep your place, if you please.  When I want your advice, I’ll ask you for it.”  Answering in those terms, the elder man fixed his colorless gray eyes on the younger with an expression which added plainly, “There won’t be room enough in this schooner much longer for me and for you.”

Launcelot Linzie had his reasons (apparently) for declining to let his host offend him on any terms whatever.

“Thank you!” he rejoined, in a tone of satirical good humor.  “It isn’t easy to keep my place on board your vessel.  I can’t help presuming to enjoy myself as if I was the owner.  The life is such a new one—­to me! It’s so delightfully easy, for instance, to wash yourself here.  On shore it’s a complicated question of jugs and basins and tubs; one is always in danger of breaking something, or spoiling something.  Here you have only to jump out of bed, to run up on deck, and to do this!”

He turned, and scampered to the bows of the vessel.  In one instant he was out of his night-gown, in another he was on the bulwark, in a third he was gamboling luxuriously in sixty fathoms of salt-water.

Turlington’s eyes followed him with a reluctant, uneasy attention as he swam round the vessel, the only moving object in view.  Turlington’s mind, steady and slow in all its operations, set him a problem to be solved, on given conditions, as follows: 

“Launcelot Linzie is fifteen years younger than I am.  Add to that, Launcelot Linzie is Natalie Graybrooke’s cousin.  Given those two advantages—­Query:  Has he taken Natalie’s fancy?”

Turning that question slowly over and over in his mind, Richard Turlington seated himself in a corner at the stern of the vessel.  He was still at work on the problem, when the young surgeon returned to his cabin to put the finishing touches to his toilet.  He had not reached the solution when the steward appeared an hour later and said, “Breakfast is ready, sir!”

They were a party of five round the cabin table.

First, Sir Joseph Graybrooke.  Inheritor of a handsome fortune made by his father and his grandfather in trade.  Mayor, twice elected, of a thriving provincial town.  Officially privileged, while holding that dignity, to hand a silver trowel to a royal personage condescending to lay a first stone of a charitable edifice.  Knighted, accordingly, in honor of the occasion.  Worthy of the honor and worthy of the occasion.  A type of his eminently respectable class.  Possessed of an amiable, rosy face, and soft, silky white hair.  Sound in his principles; tidy in his dress; blessed with moderate politics and a good digestion—­a harmless, healthy, spruce, speckless, weak-minded old man.