"Give me five--No; I forgot. I've had my fee." "It's rather less than your customary one, I'm afraid," said the Tyro, with an effortful smile. "Reckoned in thousands it would be about right. But this is different. This is serious. I've got to think about this. Meantime you keep away from that pink-and-white peril. Understand?" "Yes, sir," said the Tyro miserably. "But there's no reason why you shouldn't write a note if you think fit." "So there isn't!" The Tyro brightened amazingly. "I'll do it now." But that note was never delivered. For, coming on deck after writing it, its author met Little Miss Grouch face to face, and was the recipient of a cut so direct, so coldly smiling, so patent to all the ship-world, so indicative of permanent and hopeless unconsciousness of his existence, that he tore up the epistle and a playful porpoise rolled the fragments deep into the engulfing ocean. Perhaps it was just as well, for, as Judge Enderby remarked that night to his friend Dr. Alderson, while the two old hard-faced soft-hearts sat smoking their good-night cigar over the Tyro's troubles, in the course of a dissertation which would have vastly astonished his _confrères_ of the metropolitan bar:-- "It's fortunate that the course of true love never does run smooth. If it did, marriages would have to be made chiefly in heaven. Mighty few of them would get themselves accomplished on earth. For love is, by nature, an obstacle race. Run on the flat, without any difficulties, it would lose its zest both for pursuer and pursued, and Judge Cupid would as well shut up court and become an advocate of race suicide. But as for that spade lead, Alderson--are you listening?" "She's a devilishly pretty girl," grunted Dr. Alderson. V Fifth day out. A dull, dead, blank unprofitable calm. Nothing doing; nothing to do. Wish I'd gone steerage. SMITH'S LOG. Legal employment is susceptible of almost indefinite expansion. Thus ruminated Judge Enderby, rising early with a brisk appetite for romance, as he fingered the two five-dollar bills received from his newest client. For that client he was jovially minded to do his best. The young fellow had taken a strong hold upon his liking. Moreover, the judge was a confirmed romantic, though he would have resented being thus catalogued. He chose to consider his inner stirrings of sentimentalism in the present case as due to a fancy for minor diplomacies and delicate negotiations. One thing he was sure of: that he was enjoying himself unusually, and that the Tyro was like to get very good value for his fee. To which end, shortly after breakfast he broke through the cordon surrounding Miss Cecily Wayne and bore her off for a promenade. "But it's not alone for your _beaux yeux_," he explained to her. "I'm acting for a client."