and stiffened up with a fresh coat of paint. Great are the uses of paint-and of cement. A hole in the bottom of a river steamer is always repaired with cement; and this treatment is continued till some of the vessels that have been running for eight years or so float upon a surface that is nothing but cement, with a few stray bits of the original iron scattered about apparently by way of decoration.

There are, of course, hypercritical people who say that such things ought not to be, and that vessels so bottomed are not safe. Still, as such boats are used almost exclusively by Government officials, this latter consideration is not held of much worth or weight by right-minded men.

What cement is to the underwater parts of a steamer, that is paint to all the other parts. If she has been badly strained, if she has ricked her back upon a sandbank, if she has been badly dented in a collision, then are made manifest the virtues of the paint-pot. She is towed to the shops, the great man himself inspects her, groans over her, condemns her and orders her to be repainted! Which done, she goes afloat again until her next breakdown, when she again visits the shops, is inspected, groaned over, condemned and repainted! And so this goes on till she meets her Waterloo, and is past the aid even of paint and of paint and of cement-that is to say, until she sinks in water so deep that there is no fishing her

The faith of the responsible authorities in paint and in cement is indeed touching in its simple generous confidence. True, the said authorities do not personally adventure often upon the boats which are their charge. But they do believe in paint and in cement, and it is unusual for them to have more than 25 per cent of the fleet under water or otherwise hors de combat at the same time, so let it be reckoned to them for righteousness.

It was dark when the White Duck made fast alongside, and Ogle just had time to dress and charge up to the Residency for dinner. The chief didn't manifest much interest in what had been done-you see he'd done all these sorts of things years before when he was himself a junior-but when he heard of the prisoner Joro Shishi he brightened up at once.

"Ah," he said, "we mustn't let that fellow slip through our fingers again. He ought to have been in prison this long time past for slaving and for extortion and for other things. He is about the most dangerous man in the province. I'm glad you got him. It's a good job you went up there."

"BOTHER the woman," was all John said when he had read the letter through, but he said it with some emphasis, and it's about as strong a swear-word as he is in the habit of allowing himself.

I hadn't said a word. I had merely handed him the letter with a groan which but faintly indicated my frame of mind.

It was from my stepmother in England. Now one of my real and abiding consolations for having to live three thousand miles from England is that it puts that distance between me and my father's second wife. I married John six months after father married her; and I spent that six months wondering why on earth he did it, and blaming myself all the time for not being able to reconcile myself to the fact. She was never anything but extraordinarily and overpoweringly affectionate to me. I was "darling Margie" from the very first. My name is Margaret, and nobody else ever calls me anything but Margaret in full. And this very letter began "darling Margie as usual. I haven't had many letters from her in the twelve years I have been married and have lived abroad, but when they do come they are brimming over with affection and sympathy. This one brimmed over. I was "darling" several more times in the text of it. John was "your dear John," and the

gist of it was that "darling Gerald," her son by her first husband, Colonel Chaloner, was sailing for New York within a few weeks and would we, with our experience of "the New World," help the dear boy a little "in social ways" on his arrival? American Society seemed to be so cheerful and amusing, she was sure the change would do him good, "darling Margie," and if he did happen to take a fancy to some charming American girl with money, and how charming some of them are! like Lady This whom I meet in London, and Lady That who lives quite close to us here-well, then, how satisfactory it would be if, after all, he ever inherited Halton, where there was no money to keep up the ridiculously large house; and so on, and so on. And she knew I would help her in this little conspiracy for her dear one who was so sensible and good. She knew he would value my help. She "had had long talks with him about his future, and he quite understood what would be wisest for him." There were eight pages of false emphasis and false sentiment.

I remembered Gerald only as a small boy of ten. I had seen him at father's wedding. Once, before I left home, he had been there for part of his holidays, and I had heard of him from time to time after he went to Eton, and did pretty well there in athletics. I don't

think he ever attained a very exalted position in school. He was certainly a spoilt boy when I had seen him, with a taste for practical jokes that was galling to his elders, and I remembered boxing his ears when I caught him putting a barn-yard cock into the top shelf of my wardrobe one evening, and getting into trouble with his mother for having done it. John had taken him in hand, and the boy had been rather friendly with him-boys always do get on well with him. But that was a long time ago. And here we were, settled in a New York apart ment for the winter, very comfortable and peaceful, and utterly disinclined to be bearleaders to any young gentleman with no occupation, idling about the world in search of a girl with money. If the boy had been any use he surely would not have been loafing about without anything to do from the time he left Eton at eighteen and a half till now, when he was two and twenty. I knew my father wouldn't encourage him to be idle, and yet we had heard incidentally of his having been spun for the army, and of his having gone into some motor works and having left there not very long after. And, anyway, my conviction is that boys of twentytwo have no right whatever to be thinking of matrimony.

I had my own boys coming home for holidays at Christmas. I didn't want a loafing boy to be "around," as we say over here, with them-in my way, and in their way, and in

He

However, there it was. was to land on the 16th of November, and I felt I must be hospitable and get a room ready for him.

"I suppose we must have him here, John? It's a hideous bore if he's the sort of young man his mother suggests, but after all he belongs to me in a way; you took me for worse, and he's one of the worses.'

"I don't mind him if he isn't a 'dude.' If he is, then we won't keep him. You must think out some plan to send him elsewhere."

"Yes-Niagara, California, Mexico, the West Indies. He shall see them all, and we will have none of him."

But it was distinctly a bore. We don't go into New York society with any great vigour. We have our friends whom we like to meet quietly and to have with us in an intimate way. We don't bother about fashionable "Four hundreds" or society at Newport. John works hard and is worried if I ask him to dine out with any one we don't know pretty well, and as to balls, we simply never go to one: indeed, scarcely anybody ever asks us to one now.

We

spend our summers in New Hampshire, and in a quite unfashionable part of it. I can't imagine any couple in New York much less fitted by inclination or opportunity to carry out my stepmother's plans. Bother the woman for ever having conceived such an idea of us!

I began to dislike the young man in advance and to grudge him my spare room, and as the 16th of the month drew near my feelings towards him were distinctly hostile. About the 12th I had a letter from father. He asked me to make Gerald come to us for a time if we could and would have him, and said he knew both John and I would do the best we could for the boy, and that he believed Gerald would be really grateful. So I wrote home to father and repeated that we would do what we could for the boy, and just as I had finished my letter and ordered tea, our electric bell shrieked impatient summonses, and Phyllis Perkins burst into my drawing-room in a whirl of motor-veils and gold handbags, and flung her impulsive arms round my neck and kissed me.

"My dear, I had to come in and see you. Father 'phoned to me last night from the office he was going to Buffalo, and I was to take the automobile this morning and go to Aunt Eliza in Park Avenue. I left Boston at daybreak. Brown'll be in jail for exceeding the speed-limit, and I am as hungry as a wolf, and Aunt Eliza doesn't have tea and you have it, so here I am. Father

said I could have an elegant time in New York for two weeks, and I'm going to."

Phyllis is one of our special cronies in New Hampshire, where we spend our summers. She is as pretty as a sea-shell

pink and delicate, fresh and clear, lovely to look at, and a dear. She is as spoilt as any one can spoil so frank and natural a person. Her extraordinary old father does his best to make her intolerable, and the only effect of it is to make her more frightfully independent than anything so young and good-looking has any right to be. I don't think she is a bit more thoughtless of other people than girls of nineteen usually are, and she is generous and affectionate, and altogether charming. Narramore T. Perkins is, socially speaking, a perfectly appalling person, and Phyllis knows it just as well as we do. But she loves him, and won't have any thing to do with the people who look down on him; and to those who appreciate his good qualities, even if they sometimes wince under his provincialisms and his amazing disregard of convention, she is invariably cordial and friendly. John has business that brings him into contact with Mr Perkins, and is one of Phyllis's special adorations because he believes in Narramore and likes him.

She asked for John at once, and wanted to telephone to his office and tell him to hurry home and see her. But John was very busy and would not be back till late.