“Why, certainly not,” he consented; but Boyne Kenton, who had been an involuntary witness of the fact from a point on the forward promenade, where he had stationed himself to study the habits of the stormy petrel at a moment so favorable to the acquaintance of the petrel (having left a seasick bed for the purpose), was of another mind.  He had been alarmed, and, as it appeared in the private interview which he demanded of his mother, he had been scandalized.

“It is bad enough the way Lottie is always going on with fellows.  And now, if Ellen is going to begin!”

“But, Boyne, child,” Mrs. Kenton argued, in an equilibrium between the wish to laugh at her son and the wish to box his ears, “how could she help his catching her if he was to save her from pitching overboard?”

“That’s just it!  He will always think that she did it just so he would have to catch her.”

“I don’t believe any one would think that of Ellen,” said Mrs. Kenton, gravely.

“Momma!  You don’t know what these Eastern fellows are.  There are so few of them that they’re used to having girls throw themselves at them, and they will think anything, ministers and all.  You ought to talk to Ellen, and caution her.  Of course, she isn’t like Lottie; but if Lottie’s been behaving her way with Mr. Breckon, he must suppose the rest of the family is like her.”

“Boyne,” said his mother, provisionally, “what sort of person is Mr. Breckon?”

“Well, I think he’s kind of frivolous.”

“Do you, Boyne?”

“I don’t suppose he means any harm by it, but I don’t like to see a minister laugh so much.  I can’t hardly get him to talk seriously about anything.  And I just know he makes fun of Lottie.  I don’t mean that he always makes fun with me.  He didn’t that night at the vaudeville, where I first saw him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you remember?  I told you about it last winter.”

“And was Mr. Breckon that gentleman?”

“Yes; but he didn’t know who I was when we met here.”

“Well, upon my word, Boyne, I think you might have told us before,” said his mother, in not very definite vexation.  “Go along, now!”

Boyne stood talking to his mother, with his hands, which he had not grown to, largely planted on the jambs of her state-room door.  She was keeping her berth, not so much because she was sea-sick as because it was the safest place in the unsteady ship to be in.  “Do you want me to send Ellen to you!”

“I will attend to Ellen, Boyne,” his mother snubbed him.  “How is Lottie?”

“I can’t tell whether she’s sick or not.  I went to see about her and she motioned me away, and fairly screamed when I told her she ought to keep out in the air.  Well, I must be going up again myself, or—­”