feeling which follows a well-cooked Navy breakfast,—bacon and eggs,—his pipe sending blue clouds into the sparkling air, Armitage walked over to the torpedo boat slips. Across the harbor lay the city, bathed in golden sunshine, the tree-clad streets rising tier by tier to the crown, Bellevue Avenue. His gaze wandered seaward and for the first time since sunset he thought of Anne Wellington. Would he ever see her again? What was she doing now, he wondered. No doubt she would attend service at Trinity; many of the cottagers did. He, too, would go to church there. He had not been lately; it would do him good, he told himself.

Thus thinking, he stepped aboard the black, ominous, oily D'Estang, made his way aft and clambered down the companion ladder. There was the usual Sunday morning gathering of young officers from the boats of the flotilla. The smoke, mainly from pipes—three weeks having elapsed since pay day—was thick, and an excited argument, not over speeding records, or coal consumption, but over the merits of an English vaudeville actor who had appeared the week before at Freebody Park, was in progress.

"Hello, Jack," said a tall dark officer in spotless white uniform, "how 's the tame torpedo this morning?"

"Fine, fine, Blackie," grinned Armitage. "How's that tin cup, misnamed the Jefferson, to-day?"

"Did n't eat out of your hand last night, did she?" observed Tommy Winston of the Adams, attired in blue trousers and a flannel shirt.

"No, but she will," said Armitage.

"No doubt," replied Winston with his quaint Southern drawl. "Look here, Jackie, where you going this morning, all dressed up in gorgeous cits clothes?"

"To church," replied Armitage, "to Trinity; any one want to go with me?" he asked, ignoring the derisive chorus.

There was a moment's silence and then Bob Black looked at him quizzically.

"Does any one want to go with you?" he jeered. "Who 's the girl?"

"I wonder—But seriously, I have never been to the service there and since the Wellingtons asked me to drop into their pew any Sunday, I—"

"The Wellingtons!" exclaimed Thornton of the submarine Polyp. "You don't mean the Ronald Wellingtons?"

"No, I don't mean any Wellingtons at all. I was joking. Why?"

"Then you did n't hear of Thornton's run in with them last week?" said Winston. "That's so, you were in Washington."