“I don’t know about that,” said the man; “when my boat goes out—­”

He stopped speaking suddenly and looked the captain over and over, up and down.  “All right, sir,” said he.  “And you don’t want nobody to manage the sheet?”

“No,” interpolated Olive, “I’ll manage the sheet.”

So they went out on the bounding sea.  And as the wind whistled the hat off her head so that she had to fling it into the bottom of the boat, Olive wished that her uncle kept a toll-gate on the sea.  Then she could go out with him and stop the little boats and the great steamers, and make them drop seven cents or thirteen cents into her hands as she stood braced in the stern; and she was just beginning to wonder how she could toss up the change to them if they dropped her a quarter, when the captain began to sing Tom Bowline.  He was just as gay-hearted as she was.

It was about noon when they returned, for the captain was a very particular man and he had hired the boat only for the morning.  Olive had scarcely taken ten steps up the beach before she found herself shaking hands with a young man.

“How on earth!” she exclaimed.

“It was not on earth at all,” he said; “I came by water.  I wanted to find out if what I had heard of the horrors of a coastwise voyage were true; and I found that it was absolutely correct.”

“But here!” she exclaimed.  “Why here?  You could not have known!”

“Of course not,” he answered; “if I had known I am sure I would have felt that I ought not to come.  But I didn’t know, and so you see I am as innocent as a butterfly.  More innocent, in fact, for that little wagwings knows where he ought not to go, and he goes there all the same.”

Captain Asher was still at the boat, making some practical suggestions to her owner; who, being not yet forty, had many things to learn about the sails and rigging of a catboat.

“Mr. Locker,” said Olive, looking at him very intently, “did you come here to renew any of your previous performances?”

“As a serenader?” said he.  “Oh, no!  But perhaps you mean as a love-maker?”

“That is it,” said Olive.

Mr. Locker took off his hat, and rubbed his head.  “No,” said he, “I didn’t; but I wish I could say I did.  But that’s impossible.  I presume I am right in assuming this impossibility?”

“Entirely,” said Olive.

“And, furthermore, I truly didn’t know you were here.  I think you may rest satisfied that that flame is out, although—­By the way, I believe I could make some verses on that subject containing these lines: 

    “’I do not want the flame,
    I better like the coal—­’

meaning, of course, that I hope our friendship may continue.”

She smiled.  “There are no objections to that,” she said.

“Perhaps not, perhaps not,” he said, clutching his chin with his hand; “but some other lines come into my head.  Of course, he didn’t want the coal to go out.