"Splendid! I like dancing better than anything else in the world," Ruth declared. "I thought it was sailing? However, whatever it is, please make use of me often, Mrs. Chase. When I've nothing to do I become terribly low-spirited: for my uncles are bent upon marrying me!" "Have they selected any special person?" inquired Mrs. Franklin, laughing, as he helped her to put on her cloak. "I think they have their eye on a widow, a widow of thirty-seven with a fortune," answered Walter, with exaggerated gloom. "Will she have you?" "Never in the world!" Walter declared; "that's just it! Why, therefore, should my uncles force me forward--such a tender flower as I am--to certain defeat? It is on that account that I have run away. I have come to hide in Florida--under your protection, Mrs. Chase." The meeting-place for the water-party the next day was St. Francis Barracks--the long, brown structure with pointed gables and deep shady verandas, which stood on the site of an old Spanish monastery, at the south end of the sea-wall. The troops stationed at St. Francis that winter belonged to the First Artillery; to-day the colonel and his family, the captain and his wife, and the two handsome lieutenants took part in the excursion; there were fifty people in all, and many yachts, from the big _Seminole_ down to the little _Shearwater_. Walter had _The Owl and the Pussycat_, and with him embarked Mrs. Franklin with her two daughters, Miss Franklin and Mrs. Chase; Mrs. Lilian Kip; and Commodore Etheridge. At two o'clock the little fleet sped gayly down the Matanzas. "Matanzas, Sebastian, St. Augustine," said Walter; "these names are all in character. It's an awful misfortune for your husband's budding summer resort in the North Carolina mountains, Mrs. Chase, that its name happens to be Asheville, after that stupid custom of tacking the French 'ville' to some man's name; (for I take it that Ashe is a name, and not cinders). In this case, the first settlers were more than usually asinine; for they had the beautiful Indian 'Swannanoa' ready to their hands." "Oh, but first settlers have no love for Indian names," commented Dolly. "How can they have? The Indians and the great forest--these are their enemies. To me there is something touching in our Higgsvilles and Slatervilles. I see the first log cabins in the little clearing; then a short, stump-bedecked street; then two or three streets and a court-house. The Higgs or the Slater was their best man, their leader, the one they looked up to. In North Carolina alone there are one hundred and ten towns or villages with names ending in 'ville.'" "North Carolina? Oh yes, I dare say!" remarked Etheridge. "And two hundred and forty-one in New York," added Dolly.