I should go aboard her." Miss Dassonville saluted softly as they went under the bright banner.
"'Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light,'" she began to sing and immediately a large, blooming face rose through a mist of faded whisker at the prow and they saw all the coast of Maine looking down on them from the rail of the _Merrythought_.
"United States, ahoy ?" it said.
They came close under and Miss Dassonville hailed in return; as soon as the captain saw her face smiling up at him he beamed on it as the women in the boats had done.
"We smelled your breakfast," she explained, and the man laughed delightedly.
"I know what kind these Dagoes give ye.

Come up and have some." Peter and the girl consulted with their eyes.
"Are you going to have hot cakes ?" she demanded.
"I will if you come; darned if I don't." "We're coming, then." It was part of the task that Peter had set himself, to persevere for Savilla Dassonville the film of unconsciousness that lay delicately like the bloom of a rare fruit over all that was at that moment going on in her, that made him hasten as soon as Captain Dunham had announced himself, to introduce her particularly by name.

To forestall in the jolly sailor the natural interpretation of their appearance together at this hour and occasion, he had to lend himself to the only other reasonable surmise.

If they were not, as he saw it on the tip of the good captain's tongue to propose, newly married, they were in a hopeful way to be.

The consciousness of himself as accessory to so delightful an arrangement passed from the captain to Peter with almost the obviousness of a wink, as he surrendered himself to the charm of the girl's ethereal excitement.
He understood perfectly that his not being able to feel more of a drop from the pregnant mystery of her call and his high response to it, to the homely incident of breakfast, was due to Miss Dassonville's obliviousness of its being one.