“Perhaps I will,” she answered.

“Perhaps!” I repeated.  “That isn’t any answer at all.”

“Yes, then!” she said quickly, and, disengaging her hand from my arm, ran back a few steps.

“I hear Papa’s wheels,” she cried over her shoulder, “and, don’t forget, Fyles, dinner at seven-thirty!”

THE GOLDEN CASTAWAYS

All I did was to pull him out by the seat of the trousers.  The fat old thing had gone out in the dark to the end of the yacht’s boat-boom, and was trying to worry in the dinghy with his toe, when plump he dropped into a six-knot ebb tide.  Of course, if I hadn’t happened along in a launch, he might have drowned, but, as for anything heroic on my part—­why, the very notion is preposterous.  The whole affair only lasted half a minute, and in five he was aboard his yacht and drinking hot Scotch in a plush dressing-gown.  It was natural that his wife and daughter should be frightened, and natural, too, I suppose, that when they had finished crying over him they should cry over me.  He had taken a chance with the East River, and it had been the turn of a hair whether he floated down the current a dead grocer full of brine, or stood in that cabin, a live one full of grog.  Oh, no!  I am not saying a word against them.  But as for Grossensteck himself, he ought really to have known better, and it makes me flush even now to recall his monstrous perversion of the truth.  He called me a hero to my face.  He invented details to which my dry clothes gave the lie direct.  He threw fits of gratitude.  His family were theatrically commanded to regard me well, so that my countenance might be forever imprinted on their hearts; and they, poor devils, in a seventh heaven to have him back safe and sound in their midst, regarded and regarded, and imprinted and imprinted, till I felt like a perfect ass masquerading as a Hobson.

It was all I could do to tear myself away.  Grossensteck clung to me.  Mrs. Grossensteck clung to me.  Teresa—­that was the daughter—­ Teresa, too, clung to me.  I had to give my address.  I had to take theirs.  Medals were spoken of; gold watches with inscriptions; a common purse, on which I was requested to confer the favour of drawing for the term of my natural life.  I departed in a blaze of glory, and though I could not but see the ridiculous side of the affair (I mean as far as I was concerned), I was moved by so affecting a family scene, and glad, indeed, to think that the old fellow had been spared to his wife and daughter.  I had even a pang of envy, for I could not but contrast myself with Grossensteck, and wondered if there were two human beings in the world who would have cared a snap whether I lived or died.  Of course, that was just a passing mood, for, as a matter of fact, I am a man with many friends, and I knew some would feel rather miserable were I to make a hole in saltwater.  But, you see, I had just had a story refused by Schoonmaker’s