“Now, ladies,” he said, “the first thing is to point out the luggage.  My man here will get it all together, and stand guard over it till two others arrive to get it on board.  They will be here in a few minutes.  In fact, they ought to be here now.”

He looked on with something like dismay while the boxes were picked out and piled together.

“My dear Lady Greendale,” he said, “I am afraid you must all have very vague ideas as to the amount of accommodation in a 120-ton yacht.  She is not a Cunarder or a P and O. Why, two or three of those trunks would absolutely fill one of her cabins.”

“You did not expect, Major Mallett,” Bertha said demurely, “that we were coming for a month’s cruise with only handbags; especially after telling us that very likely we might not get a chance of getting any washing done all that time.”

“Well, I dare say we shall stow them away somewhere.  Now, as you have got them all together, we will go down to the boat.

“Now, lads, you had better get a hand cart, and get these things on board as soon as you can.”

“Which is the Osprey?” Amy Sinclair asked Bertha, as they took their places in the boat.

Bertha looked with a rather puzzled face at the fleet of yachts.

“That is,” she said, confidently, after a moment’s hesitation, pointing to one towards which the boat was at the moment heading.

Frank Mallett laughed.

“Really I should have thought, Miss Greendale, that, although making every allowance for feminine vagueness as to boats, you would have known the yacht you christened a month ago; or, at any rate, would not have mistaken a schooner for a yawl, after the patient explanation I gave you on your last visit as to the different rigs.  That is the Osprey, a hundred yards lower down.”

“Oh, yes, I remember now, that when there is a little mast standing on the stern it is a yawl.  These things seem very simple to you, Major Mallett, but they are very puzzling to women, who know nothing about them.  Now, I venture to say, that if I were to show you six different materials for frocks, and were to tell you all their names, you would know nothing about them when I showed them to you a month afterwards.

“I suppose the gentleman on board is Colonel Severn.”

“Yes, he came down by the train before yours.  I thought it better that he should do so, as in the first place, he did not know any of you, and in the next, as you see, we are pretty closely packed as it is.”

“What is that flag at the masthead?” Lady Greendale asked.  “Bertha said that your flag was going to have an eagle on it.”

“That is on my racing flag.  Let me impress upon you, ladies, that a racing flag is a square flag, and that that is not a flag at all, but a burgee.  Every club has its burgee; as you see, that is a white cross on a blue ground with a crown in the centre, and is the burgee of the Royal Thames, of which I was elected a member last month.