"Mr. Marston's compliments, Miss Marston! He requests you to join him at cards."
She pouted as she gave back Mayo's look of annoyance, and then obeyed the mandate.
Mr. Marston was stroking his narrow strip of chin beard with thumb and forefinger when she arrived on the quarter-deck. The men of business were below, and he motioned to a hammock chair beside him.
"Alma, for the rest of this cruise I want you to stay back here with our guests where you belong," he commanded with the directness of attack employed by Julius Marston in his dealings with those of his ménage.
"That--exactly. I was explicit, was I not?"
"But you do not intimate that--that I have--"
"Well?" Mr. Marston believed in allowing others to expose their sentiments before he uncovered his own.
"You don't suggest that there is anything wrong in my being on the bridge where I enjoy myself so much. I am trying to learn something about navigation."
"I am paying that fellow up there to attend to all that."
"You selected your own company for the cruise--and there is Mr. Beveridge ready to amuse you at any time."
"Mr. Beveridge amuses me--distinctly amuses me," she retorted. "But there is such a thing as becoming wearied even of such a joke as Mr. Beveridge."
"You will please employ a more respectful tone when you refer to that gentleman," said her father, with severity. But he promptly fell back into his usual mood when she came into his affairs. He was patronizingly tolerant. "Your friend, Miss Burgess, has been joking about your sudden devotion to navigation, Alma."
"Nan Burgess cannot keep her tongue still, even about herself."
"I know, but I do not intend to have you give occasion even for jokes. Of course, I understand. I know your whims. You are interested, personally, in that gold-braided chap about as much as you would be interested in that brass thing where the compass is--whatever they call it."
"But he's a gentleman!" she cried, her interest making her unwary. "His grandfather was--"
"Alma!" snapped Julius Marston. His eyes opened wide. He looked her up and down. "I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly, I am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's grandfather was. _You_ are my daughter--and you keep off that bridge!"