“Have compassion on our dullness, Miss Marjorie,” said Adrian Ducie, suavely smiling at her from across the board. In his contrariety he seemed to have divined Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s covert disapproval and made a point of according his own favor. Marjorie’s heart, however, was in no danger from his fascinations. To her he seemed a man well advanced in years, quite an old bachelor, indeed. “Tell us your dreams.” “Dreams? oh, mercy!” How often had she been warned against rising inflections and interjections? “My dreams are all mixed up. I don’t know now what they were.” “I will disentangle them for you,” he said, blandly; then in parenthesis to the waiter, “Give the cook my compliments and tell him to send up another omelette, which I will share with Miss Ashley.” “Oh, I don’t like eggs,” Marjorie blurted out, then stopped short. How often had she been admonished never to say at table that she disliked any article of diet. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, she was sure, must have noticed that lapse. “Then I will eat it all by myself--mark me now, Captain! While awaiting its construction I will tell your dreams, and interpret their mystery.” “Oh, oh,” gurgled Marjorie. What a nice old man was this Mr. Adrian Ducie! Her blithe young eyes were liquid and brilliant with expectation. “You dreamed that you and I went hunting, with some others who don’t matter and who shall be nameless,” he glanced slightingly up and down the row of passengers at the table. “We went ashore in the yawl, and I borrowed the Captain’s rifle, and----” “No, you didn’t,” said the Captain, from the next table, “for I haven’t got one.” “You don’t mean it?” said Ducie, stopping short. “Then what would become of us if pirates should board this gallant craft of ours? Depend wholly on the pistol pockets of the passengers?” “Oh, oh, Mr. Ducie,” cried Marjorie, quite losing her hold on herself, “you are so funny!” “Thank you, oh, very much, I can be funnier than that when I try.” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s unseeing eyes perceived no interest apparently in this conversation. Now and then, with an absorbed air, she recurred to her tea and toast as if naught were going forward, while her husband ate his breakfast as silently and with as much gruff concentration as a hound with a bone. Their persistent expression of a lack of interest seemed to stimulate Mr. Ducie to a further absorption of the attention of the company. “Are there really no shot-guns, no fowling-pieces aboard, nothing to shoot with deadlier than the darts of Miss Marjorie’s bright eyes?” “Oh, oh,” she squealed, enchanted at this turn, and laid down her knife and fork to put her hands before her lips apparently to suppress a series of similar shrillnesses, for this old man’s funniness was of a most captivating order.