"Then why on earth do you accept, Mallett? I took good care not to get into it. What can a man want better than this? A well-cooked dinner, eaten with a chum, and then a quiet rubber; and perhaps once a fortnight or so I go out to a dinner party, which I like well enough as a change. I always get plenty of shooting in winter, and am generally away for three months, but I am always heartily glad to get back again." "I am afraid I should get as tired of the club as I am of society, Colonel." "You have plenty of time, lad. I am twenty years your senior. Well, there is plenty before you besides society and club life. Of course, you will marry and settle down, and become a county magistrate and all that sort of thing. Thank goodness, what money came to me came in the shape of consols, and not in that of land. A country life would be exile to me; but, you see, you have left the army much younger than I did. I suppose you are not thirty yet? The Crimea and India ran you fast up the tree." "No, I am only twenty-eight. You know I was only a brevet Major, and had two more steps to get before I had a regimental majority." "That makes all the difference, Mallett; and it is absurd, a young fellow of your age crying out against society." "I don't cry out against it," Mallett laughed. "I simply say that it is out of my line, and I have never been broken into it. I was talking of buying a yacht, or rather of building one." "What size do you want? I know of one to be had cheap, if you are thinking of a good big craft." And thus it was that Mallett came to hear of the yawl at Poole. "I have fixed on the Osprey, Major Mallett," Bertha Greendale said, when he took her down to dinner two days after he had last seen her. "What do you say to that? There are two or three yachts of the same name, but none of them is over thirty tons." "I think the Osprey is a pretty name, Miss Greendale. I should have accepted the Crocodile if you had suggested it. The name that you have chosen will suit admirably; so henceforth she shall be the Osprey, pending your formally christening her by that name. I might, of course, be hypercritical and point out that, although a fishing eagle, the Osprey can scarcely be called a water bird, inasmuch that it is no swimmer." "But it is hypercritical even to suggest such a thing," she said, pouting. "The Osprey has to do with the sea. It is strong and swift on the wing, and the sails of the yacht are wings, are they not? Then it is strong and bold, and I am sure your boat will not be afraid to meet a storm. Altogether, I think it is an excellent name." "I think it a very good name, too." "You ought to have one for your figurehead." "Yachts don't have figureheads, else I would certainly have it. At any rate, I will choose an eagle for my racing flag."