“Excuse me, it was only meant for Miss Matty’s ears.”

Matty stopped laughing, to blush all over her face, and Sophy thought it more decorous to turn her back on the pair.

“Does not that green boat belong to Miss Meadowsweet?” interrupted Bertram.  “Look, Miss Bell, I am sure that is Miss Meadowsweet’s boat.”

(He had seen it for the last ten minutes, and had been secretly hoping that Mrs. Bell would unconsciously steer in that direction; she was going the other way, however, and he was obliged to speak.)

“Yes, that’s Beatrice,” said Matty, in an indifferent tone.  “She generally goes for a row in the evening.”

“All alone like that?”

“Yes, Mrs. Meadowsweet is such a coward.  She is afraid of the water.”

“Poor Miss Meadowsweet, how sad for her to be by herself!”

Matty gave a furtive and not too well-pleased glance at her captain.

“Bee likes to be alone,” she said.

“I should never have thought it.  She seems a sociable, bright sort of girl.  Don’t you want to talk to her?  I know you do.  I see it in your face.  You think it will be irksome for me, but, never mind, we need not stay long.  I must not be selfish nor indulge in the wish to keep you all to myself.  I know you want to talk to Miss Meadowsweet, and so you shall,—­I won’t have you balked.”

Here he raised his voice.

“Mrs. Bell, will you steer over to Miss Meadowsweet’s boat?  Miss Matty, here, has something to say to her.”

Not an earthly thing had Matty to communicate to her friend, but the captain had managed to put the matter in such a light that she could only try to look pleased, and pretend to acquiesce.

“Oh, yes, she had always lots to say to her darling Bee,” she murmured.  And then, somehow, her poor little silly spirits went down, and she had a sensation of feeling rather flat.

As will be seen by the foregoing remarks, Captain Bertram had a rare gift for making killing and funny speeches.

Matty had over and over pronounced him to be the most brilliantly witty person she had ever in the whole course of her life encountered.  But his talent as a supposed wit was nothing at all to the cleverness with which he now managed to keep the large white boat by the side of the small green one for the remainder of the evening.  It was entirely managed by the superior will of one person, for certainly none of the Bells wished for this propinquity.

Mrs. Bell, who like a watchful hen-mother was apparently seeing nothing, and yet all the time was tenderly brooding over the little chick whom she hoped was soon about to take flight from the parent nest, saw at a glance that her chick looked nothing at all beside that superior chicken of Mrs. Meadowsweet’s.  For Matty’s little nose was sadly burnt, and one lock of her thin limp hair was flying not too picturesquely in the breeze.  And her home-cut