“And what ought you to do when you find out you are mistaken in yourself?”

“That’s what I’m trying to decide,” he replied.  “Sometimes I feel like renouncing myself altogether; but usually I give myself another chance.  I dare say if I hadn’t been so forbearing I might have agreed with your sister about my unfitness for the ministry.”

“With Lottie?”

“She thinks I laugh too much!”

“I don’t see why a minister shouldn’t laugh if he feels like it.  And if there’s something to laugh at.”

“Ah, that’s just the point!  Is there ever anything to laugh at?  If we looked closely enough at things, oughtn’t we rather to cry?” He laughed in retreat from the serious proposition.  “But it wouldn’t do to try making each other cry instead of laugh, would it?  I suppose your sister would rather have me cry.”

“I don’t believe Lottie thought much about it,” said Ellen; and at this point Mr. Breckon yielded to an impulse.

“I should think I had really been of some use if I had made you laugh, Miss Kenton.”

“Me?”

“You look as if you laughed with your whole heart when you did laugh.”

She glanced about, and Breckon decided that she had found him too personal.  “I wonder if I could walk, with the ship tipping so?” she asked.

“Well, not far,” said Breckon, with a provisional smile, and then he was frightened from his irony by her flinging aside her wraps and starting to her feet.  Before he could scramble to his own, she had slid down the reeling promenade half to the guard, over which she seemed about to plunge.  He hurled himself after her; he could not have done otherwise; and it was as much in a wild clutch for support as in a purpose to save her that he caught her in his arms and braced himself against the ship’s slant.  “Where are you going?  What are you trying to do?” he shouted.

“I wanted to go down-stairs,” she protested, clinging to him.

“You were nearer going overboard,” he retorted.  “You shouldn’t have tried.”  He had not fully formulated his reproach when the ship righted herself with a counter-roll and plunge, and they were swung staggering back together against the bulkhead.  The door of the gangway was within reach, and Breckon laid hold of the rail beside it and put the girl within.  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No, no; I’m not hurt,” she panted, sinking on the cushioned benching where usually rows of semi-sea-sick people were lying.

“I thought you might have been bruised against the bulkhead,” he said.  “Are you sure you’re not hurt that I can’t get you anything?  From the steward, I mean?”

“Only help me down-stairs,” she answered.  “I’m perfectly well,” and Breckon was so willing on these terms to close the incident that he was not aware of the bruise on his own arm, which afterwards declared itself in several primitive colors.  “Don’t tell them,” she added.  “I want to come up again.”