“I don’t know what she would have done with the instruction if she had got it,” said the judge, dryly, and the young man ventured in her behalf: 

“It would be difficult for any one to manage, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” Kenton assented, and Lottie could see that he was thinking Ellen would know what to do with it.

She resented that, and she was in the offence that girls feel when their elders make them the subject of comment with their contemporaries.  “Well, I’ll leave you to discuss it alone.  I’m going to Ellen,” she said, the young man vainly following her a few paces, with apologetic gurgles of laughter.

“That’s right,” her father consented, and then he seized the opening to speak about Ellen.  “My eldest daughter is something of an invalid, but I hope we shall have her on deck before the voyage is over.  She is more interested in those matters than her sister.”

“Oh!” Mr. Breckon interpolated, in a note of sympathetic interest.  He could not well do more.

It was enough for Judge Kenton, who launched himself upon the celebration of Ellen’s gifts and qualities with a simple-hearted eagerness which he afterwards denied when his wife accused him of it, but justified as wholly safe in view of Mr. Breckon’s calling and his obvious delicacy of mind.  It was something that such a person would understand, and Kenton was sure that he had not unduly praised the girl.  A less besotted parent might have suspected that he had not deeply interested his listener, who seemed glad of the diversion operated by Boyne’s coming to growl upon his father, “Mother’s bringing Ellen up.”

“Oh, then, I mustn’t keep your chair,” said the minister, and he rose promptly from the place he had taken beside the judge, and got himself away to the other side of the ship before the judge could frame a fitting request for him to stay.

“If you had,” Mrs. Kenton declared, when he regretted this to her, “I don’t know what I would have done.  It’s bad enough for him to hear you bragging about the child without being kept to help take care of her, or keep her amused, as you call it.  I will see that Ellen is kept amused without calling upon strangers.”  She intimated that if Kenton did not act with more self-restraint she should do little less than take Ellen ashore, and abandon him to the voyage alone.  Under the intimidation he promised not to speak of Ellen again.

At luncheon, where Mr. Breckon again devoted himself to Lottie, he and Ellen vied in ignoring each other after their introduction, as far as words went.  The girl smiled once or twice at what he was saying to her sister, and his glance kindled when it detected her smile.  He might be supposed to spare her his conversation in her own interest, she looked so little able to cope with the exigencies of the talk he kept going.

When he addressed her she answered as if she had not been listening, and he turned back to Lottie.  After luncheon he walked with her, and their acquaintance made such a swift advance that she was able to ask him if he laughed that way with everybody.