The Honorable Percival

								

float and swim like a trio of mad young porpoises.
The Honorable Percival was a good swimmer himself, and his interest
kindled as he watched the perfect ease with which the young person
handled herself in the narrow confines of the tank. While he deplored
the wretched taste of the proceeding, he had to admit that she carried
it off with admirable lack of self-consciousness. She swam as she did
everything else, with impetuous joy, and seemed as unaware of the
admiring glances of the spectators as the children themselves.
"Did ye see her the other day when she climbed to the crow's-nest?"
asked the Scotchman, with enthusiasm.
"No," said Percival, curtly.
"The wind was blowing at a bittie, but she went up the rigging like a
sailor. I doubt if the lass would be afraid of the de'il himself."
"Probably jolly well used to all this sort of thing," said Percival,
wearily.
"Indeed, no; this is her first sea-voyage. She never saw a ship before."
"I thought you said she was the captain's daughter."
"So she is; but he's had her out on a Western ranch since she was a bit
of a lass. Quite a romance!"
"Really?"
"Yes. Her mother was a play-actress. Ran off with an English nobleman.
Left the captain and the lassie in the lurch, and died before she
reached England. I had the story from the purser."
"Where's the girl going now?"
"The captain is fetching her the round trip to Hong-Kong, to break off
some love-affair at home, I believe. But if she's as canny as she's
bonny, I'll wager she'll outwit him before they have done."
Percival, who at first had remained in the back row of the spectators,
during this recital moved to the front, and now as he looked down he
suddenly encountered the laughing glance of the person under discussion.
She was lazily watching him from where she floated in the water, with
her loosened hair circling in a dark cloud about her head. The
expression on her face gave him instant cause for alarm.
Since that first day when she had spoken to him, he had studiously
avoided meeting her eye, and had even come to congratulate himself on
having removed from her mind the suspicion of a former encounter. But
there was that in the glance that now met and held his that dispelled
any such hope. It indicated all too clearly that she had not been
deceived, and that she was treating the matter with unbecoming levity.
Percival returned haughtily to his steamer-chair, but not to count
raindrops. He had food for new and most irritating reflections. The
girl's refusal to take his cue and ignore the very mild flirtation that
had occurred on the car-platform placed him in a situation at once
awkward and embarrassing. He rather prided himself on never taking
advantage of any tribute of admiration that might be tendered him by the
less experienced of her sex. On more than one occasion in the past he
had heroically extinguished the tender flames that his own charms had