“Well, Ike kind o’ feels that the shop’s been rubbin’ it into him of late for some reason,” observed the bos’n heavily. “I don’t know why. He thinks you two have been tryin’ to freeze him out, I guess. Says he can’t do anything any more, that everybody makes fun of him and shuts him out.” We stared at each other in wise illumination, the new captain and the new mate. After all, we were plainly the cause of poor little Ike’s depression, and we were the ones who could restore him to favor if we chose. It was the captain’s cabin he sighed for--his old pleasant prerogatives. “Oh, we can’t lose Ike, Captain,” I said. “What good would the _Harmony_ be without him? We surely can’t let anything like that happen, can we? Not now, anyhow.” “You’re right, mate,” he replied. “There never was a better bos’n’s mate, never. The _Harmony’s_ got to have ’im. Let’s talk reason to him, if we can.” In company then we three went to him, this time not to torment or chastise, but to coax and plead with him not to forsake the shop, or the ship, now that everything was going to be as before--only better--and---- Well, we did. MARRIED In connection with their social adjustment, one to the other, during the few months they had been together, there had occurred a number of things which made clearer to Duer and Marjorie the problematic relationship which existed between them, though it must be confessed it was clearer chiefly to him. The one thing which had been troubling Duer was not whether he would fit agreeably into her social dreams--he knew he would, so great was her love for him--but whether she would fit herself into his. Of all his former friends, he could think of only a few who would be interested in Marjorie, or she in them. She cared nothing for the studio life, except as it concerned him, and he knew no other. Because of his volatile, enthusiastic temperament, it was easy to see, now that she was with him constantly, that he could easily be led into one relationship and another which concerned her not at all. He was for running here, there, and everywhere, just as he had before marriage, and it was very hard for him to see that Marjorie should always be with him. As a matter of fact, it occurred to him as strange that she should want to be. She would not be interested in all the people he knew, he thought. Now that he was living with her and observing her more closely, he was quite sure that most of the people he had known in the past, even in an indifferent way, would not appeal to her at all.