With the prospect of so extended a trip before him, Frank found
much to be done in the engine-room, for their suggested cruise
would be likely to carry them far out of the beaten track, and he
had to be prepared for all contingencies. A marine engine requires
to be perpetually tinkered, and an engineer's duty is not only to
run it, but to make good the little defects and breakdowns that
are constantly occurring. Frank was a daily visitor at the local
machine-shop, and his business engagements with Mr. Derwent, the
proprietor, led insensibly to others of the social kind.

Derwent's house was close by his works, and Frank's trips ashore
soon began to take in both. Derwent had a daughter, a black-
haired, black-eyed, pink-cheeked girl, named Cassie, one of those
vigorous young English beauties that men would call stunning and
women bold. She did not wait for any preliminaries, but
straightway fell in love with the handsome American engineer that
her father brought home. She made her regard so plain that Frank
was embarrassed, and was not a bit put off at his reluctance to
play the part she assigned to him.

"That's always my luck," she remarked with disarming candour, "a
poor silly fool who always likes them that don't like me and
spurns them that do!" And then she added, with a laugh, that he
ought to be tied up, "for you are a cruel handsome man, Frank, and
my heart goes pitapat at the very sight of you!"

She called him Frank at the second visit; and at the third seated
herself on the arm of his chair and took his hand and held it.