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 They considered themselves persons "of quality"—that was it.

Quality, Quality Street—Phœbe Throstle! Everything led back to Phœbe!

He shivered as he passed the open door of the ghostly playroom, and hurried upstairs to bed.

Inordinate bustle troubled the slumbers of Hale's Turning with the advent of spring, reminding the aged of days when ship "lanchings" were of frequent occurrence. From the riverside issued an incessant din of trip-hammers, and as summer wore on, the hulls of three stocky steamers loomed up. On Sunday afternoons the pastime of the godly was to walk along the bluff, survey these evidences of Dave Ashmill's ingenuity, and make comment on the progress since the previous Sabbath.

Paul's abilities had been discovered by old Dave and put to the best advantage. Chief among them was a knack he had acquired at sea of handling men. Ashmill's success had been due in good measure to his gift for suborning brains, and Paul knew, from Aunt Verona, that his own father had swelled the Ashmill fortunes by enlarging the foreign market.

Paul noted that the people who had liked him seized on his new occupation with relief, as though to assure him that by contributing his knowledge of ships towards the success of the allies he was in a measure redeeming himself. He declined the shift.

"I'm doing it not because it's my 'bit, he said truculently one day to the Baptist minister, "but because building ships is always a worth-while task."

"And sinking them?"

"Is, of course, insane."

"Ah, my young friend, how true! I fear Germany's