"You have done well, and I am quite sure that you will make a yacht of it. Now, if you will give me a receipt for one hundred dollars, I will let you have so much towards the price of the Maud, for I suppose you want to pay your men off to-night." "I have money enough, sir, to pay my men, and I don't ask you for any money yet," replied the young boat-builder. "But I prefer to pay you as the work progresses." Donald did not object, and wrote the receipt. He was a minor, and his mother, who was the administratrix of her husband's estate, was the responsible party in the transaction of business; but he did not like to sign his mother's name to a receipt, and thus wholly ignore himself, and, adopting a common fiction in trade, he wrote, "Ramsay and son," which he determined should be the style of the firm. Ramsay might mean his father or his mother, and he had already arranged this matter with her. Mr. Rodman laughed at the signature, but did not object to it, and Donald put the money in his pocket, after crediting it on the book. This was the day appointed for the first regatta of the Yacht Club. The coming event had been talked about in the city during the whole week, not only among the boys, but among the men who were interested in yachting. About a dozen yachts had been entered for the race, though only four of them belonged to the club; those that were not enrolled being nominally in charge of members, in order to conform to the regulations. Donald had measured all these boats, and made a schedule of them, in which appeared the captain's name, the length of the craft, with the correction to be subtracted from the sailing time in order to reduce it to standard time. There were columns in the table for the starting time, the return time, and the sailing time. The "correction" was virtually the allowance which a large yacht made to a smaller one for the difference in length. The club had adopted the regulation of the Dorchester Yacht Club, which contained a "table of allowance per mile." In this table, a yacht one hundred and ten feet six inches long, is taken as the standard for length. The Skylark was just thirty feet long on the water-line, and her allowance by the table was two minutes forty-three and four tenths seconds for every mile sailed in a regatta. The Sea Foam's length was three inches less, and her allowance was one and three tenths seconds more. Donald had his table all ready for the use of the judges, of whom he had been appointed the chairman. Mr. Montague's large yacht had been anchored in the bay, gayly dressed with flags and streamers, to be used as the judges' boat. The yachts were to start at ten o'clock. "I don't want to leave my work a bit," said Donald, as he took off his apron. "I may have to lose a whole day in the race, and I can't afford it." "Now, I think you can," replied Kennedy. "It looks too much like boys' play."