Ken had found his breath, and his reason.

“What a little lightning calculator!” he said.  “Don’t go so fast, Philly; why, your castle scrapes the clouds!  This time of year I won’t carry any baggage on the up trips—­just gasolene wasted; and there’s the rent of the dock and the store-room,—­it isn’t much, but it’s quite a lot off the profit,—­and gas and oil, and lots of trips when I sha’n’t be in such luck.  But I do think it’s going to work—­and pay, even if it’s only fifteen or twenty dollars a week.”

Whereupon Felicia called him a lamb, and kissed him, and he submitted.

That night they had a cake.  Eggs had been lavished on it to produce its delectable golden smoothness, and sugar had not been stinted.

“It’s a special occasion,” Felicia apologized, “to celebrate the Sturgis Water Line and honor Captain Kenelm Sturgis—­defender of his kindred,” she added mischievously.

“Cut it!” muttered Ken; but she took it to mean the cake, and handed him a delicious slice.

“All right,” said Ken.  “Let’s feast.  But don’t be like the girl with the pitcher of milk on her head, Phil.”

* * * * *

If you suppose that Miss Felicia Sturgis was lonely while her brother, the captain, was carrying on his new watery profession, you are quite mistaken.  She hadn’t time even to reflect whether she was lonely or not.  She had no intention of letting Applegate Farm sink back to the untidy level of neglect in which she had found it, and its needs claimed much of her energy.  She tried to find time in which to read a little, for she felt somewhat guilty about the unceremonious leave she had taken of her schooling.  And there was cookery to practise, and stockings to mend, and, oh dear, such a number of things!

But Kirk’s education filled the most important place, to her, in the scheme of things at Asquam.  If she had not been so young, and so ambitious, and so inexperienced, she might have faltered before the task she set herself, temporary though it might be.  Long before the Sturgis Water Line had hung out its neat shingle at the harbor-master’s wharf; before the Maestro and music had made a new interest in Kirk’s life; while Applegate Farm was still confusion—­Felicia had attacked the Braille system with a courage as conscientious as it was unguided.  She laughed now to think of how she had gone at the thing—­not even studying out the alphabet first.  In the candle-light, she had sat on the edge of her bed—­there was no other furniture in the room—­with one of Kirk’s books on her knee.  Looking at the dots embossed on the paper conveyed nothing to her; she shut her eyes, and felt the page with a forefinger which immediately seemed to her as large as a biscuit.  Nothing but the dreadful darkness, and the discouraging little humps on the paper which would not even group themselves under her fingers!  Felicia had ended her first attempt at mastering Braille, in tears—­but not altogether over her own failure.