Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/249



O the yacht Elsa had turned up at last? William eyed her gloomily and with hostile speculation. He could not deny that she was a thing of beauty among all the nondescript craft which dotted the harbor. How dingy the good old Ajax looked in the background, with her scarred plates, her peeling paint, her rusty anchor chains! Gulls were wheeling circles around her; lighters were thick under her ports; her booms were busy in the service of commerce. She looked like a great bumblebee which had fallen prey to an army of waterbugs. She would be carrying tea all the way to San Francisco. She had a place in the world, this homely Ajax; she was serving mankind honorably. William knew that he loved her. To him the ship had, since the storm, taken on a distinct personality ; she was something more than teak and steel, something more than an inanimate man-driven thing.

And what of the other, the sleek, handsome yacht, with her white enamel, her polished brass, her dazzling awnings? A plaything, a rich man's plaything. William was without envy; his philosophy accepted the fact that there would always be an unequal distribution of wealth; he had no