Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/328

310 and deep dimples in his cheeks. If anyone had told me that he was not an English admiral I should have known it was a fib.

"I hope you are n't engaged for this next waltz?" said he. "I should like very much to have it with you." And he spoke as nicely as he would to a young girl of his own world, although he must have heard from someone that I was a lady's maid.

I glanced at Jack, but evidently he approved of admirals as partners for his sister. He kept himself in the background, smiling benevolently, and I skipped away with my brown old sailor, as the music for the dance began.

"Heard you spoke English," said he, encircling my Directoire waist with the arm of a sea-going Hercules, "otherwise I should n't have had the courage to come up and speak to you."

I laughed. "A Dreadnought afraid of a fishing-smack!"

"My word, if you were a fishin'-smack, my little friend, you would n't lack for fish to catch," chuckled the old gentleman, who was waltzing like an elderly angel—as all sailors do. Now, if Bertie had said what he said, I should have been offended, but coming from the admiral it cheered me up.

"You are an admiral, are n't you?" I was bold enough to ask.

"Who told you that?" he wanted to know.

"My eyes," said I.

"They're bright ones," he retorted. "But I suppose I do look an old sea-dog—what? A regular old saltwater dog. But by George, it 's hot water I 've got into to-night. D' ye see that stout lady we 're just passin'?—