"Excuse me, Lavinia."

"No, Joseph, I have it down in my diary."

"Let us waive the point." (Sir Joseph invariably used this formula as a
means of at once conciliating his sister, and getting a fresh start for
his story.) "I was cruising off the Mersey in a Liverpool pilot-boat. I
had hired the boat in company with a friend of mine, formerly notorious
in London society, under the nickname (derived from the peculiar brown
color of his whiskers) of 'Mahogany Dobbs.'"

"The color of his liveries, Joseph, not the color of his whiskers."

"My dear Lavinia, you are thinking of 'Sea-green Shaw,' so called from
the extraordinary liveries he adopted for his servants in the year when
he was sheriff."

"I think not, Joseph."

"I beg your pardon, Lavinia."

Richard Turlington's knotty fingers drummed impatiently on the table. He
looked toward Natalie. She was idly arranging her little morsels of
ham in a pattern on her plate. Launcelot Linzie, still more idly, was
looking at the pattern. Seeing what he saw now, Richard solved the
problem which had puzzled him on deck. It was simply impossible that
Natalie's fancy could be really taken by such an empty-headed fool as
that!