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“How very kind you are, Mr. Livingstone,” Dorothy hastened to say, in order to head off her uncle’s inevitable refusal. “Of course we will go, with the greatest possible pleasure. It is very odd how things fall out sometimes. Now only this morning I was begging Uncle Hutchinson to take me off yachting, and he was saying how much he enjoyed being at sea, and how he really thought that if it wasn’t for his age–wasn’t it absurd of him to talk about his age? He is not old at all, the dear!–he would have a yacht of his own. And almost before the words are fairly out of our mouths here you drop from the clouds, or are cast up by the sea, it’s all the same thing, and give us both just what we have been longing for. At least, Uncle Hutchinson pretended to be longing for it only in case he could be young enough to enjoy it; but if he doesn’t think he’s young now, I’d like to know what he’ll call himself when he’s fifty!” And then, facing around sharply upon her uncle, Dorothy concluded: “The idea of pretending that you are too old to go yachting! Really, Uncle Hutchinson, I am ashamed of you!”

As has been intimated, if there was any one subject upon which Mr. Port was especially sensitive, it was the subject of his age. As the parish register of St. Peter’s all too plainly proved, he never would see sixty again; but this awkward record was in an out-of-the-way place, and the agreeable fiction that he advanced in various indirect ways to the effect that he was a trifle turned of forty-seven was not likely to be officially contradicted. And it is not impossible, so tenacious was he upon this point, that had the official proof been produced, he would have denied its authenticity. For it was Mr. Port’s firm determination still to figure before the world as a youngish, middle-aged man.

To say that Miss Lee deliberately set herself to playing upon this weakness of her guardian’s, possibly, remotely possibly, would be doing her injustice. But the fact is obvious that she succeeded by her cleverly turned discourse in landing her esteemed relative fairly between the horns of an exceedingly awkward dilemma: either Mr. Port must accept the invitation and be horribly ill, or he must reject it, and so throw over his pretensions to elderly youth.

For a moment the unhappy gentleman hung in the wind, and Dorothy regretted that she had not made her statement of the case still stronger. Indeed, she was about to supplement it by a remark to the effect that people never thought of giving up yachting until they were turned of sixty, when, to her relief, her uncle slowly filled away on the right tack. His acceptance was expressed in highly ungracious terms; but, as has been said, Dorothy never troubled herself about forms, provided she compassed results. The moment that he had uttered the fatal words, Mr. Port fell to cursing himself in his own mind for being such a fool; but the same reason that had impelled him to give his consent withheld him from retracting it. He knew that he was going to be desperately miserable; but, at least, nobody could say that he was old.

“I’m ever so much obliged to you, Miss Lee, and to you too, Mr. Port,” said Livingstone. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and hunt up Mrs. Rattle-ton, and tell her what a splendid raise I’ve made, and help her organize the rest of the party. We shall have only two more. It’s a bore to have more than six people on board a yacht. I don’t know why it is, I’m sure, but if you have more than six they always get to fighting. Queer, isn’t it?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Port. “Mrs. Rattleton? May I ask if this is the Mrs. Rattleton from New York who was here last season, the one whose bathing costume was so–so very eccentric, and about whom there was so much very disagreeable talk?”