“Sailors and soldiers--it's the same the world over! There's no chance for us common fellows when they are about. Tell you what I shall have to do--join the militia and come around in full uniform. Then maybe you would be looking at me, too. I don't know but what I could even make you forget him.” She had to laugh at this. “Maybe you could.” “I suppose it wouldn't do me any good to try without the uniform, would it?” She tossed her head now. “So that's what you think of me--that I care for nothing but clothes?” “Oh, no, it's not the clothes. His red shirt would never do it. But it's the idea of a sailor's life--there is a sort of glitter about it--he seems pluckier, somehow, than other men. It's the dash and the grand-stand play that fetches it. I suppose it wouldn't be a bit of use to tell you that you are too good for him.” She made no reply, and the conversation halted. Annie gazed pensively out across the water. He watched her, and as the moments slipped away his expression began to change; for he was still a young man, and the witchery of the night was working within him. “Do you know, I'm pretty nearly mean enough to tell you some things about Dick Smiley. I don't know but what I'm a little jealous of him.” She did not turn, or speak. “I'm afraid it is so. I would hardly talk like this if I were not. I thought I was about girl-proof,--up to now, no one has been able to keep my mind off my work very long at a time,--but you have been playing the mischief with me, this last week or so. It's no use, Annie. I wouldn't give three cents for the man that could look at you and keep his head. And when I think of you throwing yourself away on Smiley, just because he's good-looking and a sailor--you mustn't do it, that's all. I have been watching you--” “Oh,--you have?” “Yes, and I think maybe I see some things about you that you don't see yourself. I wonder if you have thought where a man like Smiley would lead you?” She would have protested at this, but he swept on. “He can never be anything more than he is. He has no head for business, and even if he works hard, he can't hope to do more than own his schooner. You see, he's not prepared for anything better; he's side-tracked. And if you were just a pretty girl and nothing more,--just about the size of these people around you,--I don't suppose I should say a word; I should know you would never be happy anywhere else. Why, Annie, do you suppose there's a girl anywhere else on the shore of Lake Michigan--on the whole five Lakes--living among fishermen and sailors, as you do, that could put on a dress the way you have put that one on, that could wear it the way you're wearing it now?