It was none of the young officer's business, as he told himself, but he could not help wondering what was up between the Admiral and Jermyn. He saw the old gentleman scramble upon the rear platform of the last car, and at that very instant the train started, so the tug's nose was put up Chesapeake Bay, while her commander told himself that the chasing of a big ferry boat by a small tug was a sort of service for which boats of the lighthouse service were not designed, and that the next time the Admiral wanted anything of the sort done, and wanted a locomotive chased afterward, he hoped there would be a torpedo boat in the harbor. Meanwhile the Admiral was making his way through the train in search of Jermyn, while the latter, moving from front to rear, was looking for Kate. The two men met suddenly in the vestibule between two cars. "Admiral!" exclaimed Jermyn. "Are you too going to New York?" "Not this time, dear boy. Neither are you. She's changed her mind--Miss Trewman--she's still at the hotel. Where's the conductor? Hang it, Charley will never be able to catch us if we go on at this rate. Where's the bell-rope?" The old gentleman, who was quite short, sprang lightly upward, blew two long blasts, and the train began to slow. The Admiral opened the vestibule door and said: "Come on! We'll have to jump." Jump they did, and into some Eastern Shore mud which did not harmonize with the attire of either gentleman. As they floundered out of it, screened from the train by some scrubby bushes, the tug, which had heard the locomotive's stopping signal, blew three long blasts of her own whistle. Long before she steamed abreast of the part of the beach which the runaways had reached, the Admiral was waving his handkerchief so wildly that Jermyn insisted upon relieving him to spare him the pangs of a stiff shoulder and the danger of apoplexy. CHAPTER XIX. THE MISSING GUEST. As Trif was a prudent wife and housekeeper, she had been moaning to herself for days about the expense of the Southern trip. Nevertheless, she arranged for a lunch party regardless of expense, as befitted an occasion when two happy couples, newly made so, were to be her guests. She promised herself that she would pay for it by not buying a single new article of clothing, not even a new frock, for the coming season. She would economize in any and every way; she would let her house, furnished, for a few months, and take Trixy and Fenie and herself to some out-of-the-way place where everything was cheap, and the other boarders would not know her old clothes from the newest. Further, as she would have to send home for more money, she sat down and wrote an ecstatic confession to her husband, telling him that she really thought it her duty, as a member of society, to complete the matches which were as good as made between Harry and Fenie, Kate and Jermyn.