Theo Carnegy had been trying her hardest for a couple of hours to add up the housekeeping bills for the week. It was a task the girl dreaded always, and on this particular day the figures seemed unusually contrary and obstinate to cope with. Somehow, they utterly refused to come straight and tally with the money she had been entrusted with to lay out. The bristling difficulties seemed all the more unmanageable because the sunshine that afternoon was so bright, and the wind so fresh; while the boat that belonged to the Carnegy family lay tossing at anchor within sight, as if inviting the girl down for the greatest enjoyment of her life--a pull across the bay. But there was good stuff in Theo, gentle and yielding though she looked, with her sweet, soft face, and the fair waving hair surrounding it. She was the one of all the Carnegys who had deliberately given her heart to God's service. That she had done so spoke out of her clear, steadfast eyes, and in the peaceful lines of her mouth, and more than all, in her unflagging determination to keep on straight at what she knew to be her duty, without allowing herself to be beguiled to this side or to that of the narrow path. Eighteen is not a very advanced age, even regarded from the point of view of her brothers and little sister; and Theo, who passionately loved the sea, had a great struggle to keep her blue eyes fixed on the tiresome figures, which would not come right, struggle as she might to make them. It never occurred to her to shirk a difficulty in any sense; her nature was such that she must grapple with a duty, however distasteful, once she felt she was appointed to fulfil it. Her mother had died when Theo, the eldest Carnegy, was fifteen, and Queenie, the younger, only two years old. So, already, she had been for three years her father's housekeeper. A certain sum of money was given into her hands every week by the captain, and there was an end of the matter as regarded him. He wanted to hear nothing about ways and means, certainly no details regarding household management. All such was forbidden sternly; the captain's time was valuable, he imagined, it being dedicated to the great object which he hoped to achieve before he died. Distinctly, the naval battles of the world throughout the ages were more important than the everyday skirmishes in his own household. Theo, therefore, knew that on no pretext whatever might she venture to appeal to her preoccupied father in her difficulties; but she was faithful to her charge, and gallantly enough fought with the distracting items and their corresponding figures, which should have agreed, but didn't. It was uphill work, however, for the youthful housekeeper. 'Can't you come out yet, Theo? The boys are across the bay at the Vicarage, and we could have the boat all to ourselves, if you would only leave those nasty sums!'