"I'm not too notorious--I notice--for you people--to beg libraries from," drawled Sheridan Kaire. Then quite suddenly he leaned back against the wainscoating of the cabin and began to laugh sardonically. "Jabber all you want to," he said. "It's a good way to pass the time! Just a minute more now and we'll be off, beating it for Key West or Galveston--or any other place where the parsons are thickest and quickest! Miss Daphne Bretton and Mr. Sheridan Kaire--heavily chaperoned by President Claudia Merriwayne! All the newspapers will lean heavily on that chaperone item! So square it any way you want to with your college, Miss Merriwayne!" he bowed. "Now that you [184] have squared it with Daphne!" More hilariously yet he yielded to his mirth, and called loudly for the Steward. "Champagne for everybody, to-night!" he ordered. "Guests, crew, cabin boys, everybody! If the cat won't drink it, drown him in it! Drat libraries!" he shouted lustily. "_This is_ my Bachelor Dinner!" Swishing like a serpent's hiss, Miss Merriwayne started for her cabin. As she passed Daphne she drew her skirts aside with a gesture that would have been sufficiently insulting without any further action. But her tongue refused to be robbed of its own particular reprisal. "As I have remarked once before," she murmured icily, "you--you little wanton!" "_Not so fast_!" cried a new voice from the doorway. Towering, white head and brown shoulders over everybody, Jaffrey Bretton loomed on the scene. "Oh--Hades!" sighed the master of the house-boat. "_Not so fast, anybody_!" begged Jaffrey Bretton. If the smile on his face was just a little bit set it was at least still a smile. [185] Quite casually above the spurt and flare of his inevitable match and his inevitable cigarette his shrewd glance swept the gamut of startled faces. "_What's_ all the rumpus about?" he quizzed. Simple as the question was it seemed for some reason or other to put a queer sort of pucker into everybody's pulses. ("Oh, what a place!" shivered the oldest trustee. "Why did we ever come?") ("Oh, what a man!" quivered the architect. "I wish I had designed him!") Ignoring all other pulses, Jaffrey Bretton turned to Miss Merriwayne. With sincere and unaffected interest he appraised the majestic if somewhat arrogant bloom of what had been only a mere bud of good looks and ambition twenty years before. "You are certainly very handsome, Clytie," he affirmed. "'Clytie?'" gasped the oldest trustee. "C-Clytie?" stammered Daphne. "Miss Merriwayne and I were boy and girl friends together," observed Bretton with unruffled blandness. "But for the moment it is not personal reminiscence that concerns me most." Towering, dominant, absolutely [186] relentless, but still serene, he blocked Miss Merriwayne's exit. "Just--what, Clytie," he asked, "were you calling my little girl?" "You heard what I called her, Mr. Bretton!" said Miss Merriwayne. "I called her a wanton!"