Some honeymoon!

When John Ryder put his foot upon the plank of the Minnequago on his return journey from Europe he was a bachelor of thirty-five summers--and had never counted his winters at all. He believed, with many another upholder of single blessedness, that a man did not begin to count his wintry years until he was married.

Just the same, as he walked up the incline of the runway he was walking to his fate. Indeed, he came face to face with it as he trod upon the deck of the ship and, almost bumping into it, politely lifted his hat and said:

"Pardon me!"

The lady bowed silently and turned upon him a careless shoulder. John Ryder allowed himself a second glance--and then let the steward take his hand luggage below while he did something he had not done since his early crossings. He hung about on deck to see the hawsers cast off--a mark of curiosity that usually stamps the traveler as quite new to the game.

Even then he did not know why he did this.

Business. Business with a big B. Business first, last, and all the time. That was John Ryder, and so plain was it to most people who met him that a tag on his back stating that he was a hustling American business man would have been quite unnecessary.

Ryder had been in the chase after the nimble dollar since he was breeched. He was a self-made man, and although he was proud of that fact he did not go around blowing about the quality of the product.

People could take him for what he was--or what they thought he was. He was not personally assertive, although he fully knew his own opinion upon any subject to which he had given thought. He did not consider it necessary to tell every person who interviewed him, or show them by his manner, that he was really too busy with weighty affairs to give their own little matter its proper attention. He seldom cared what people thought of him as long as he impressed them with his honesty of purpose, and that he was in earnest.

That is, he had seldom cared until now. But he confessed to himself, in the secrecy of his inner thoughts and the privacy of his stateroom, that he was desirous of having at least one person aboard the Minnequago think of him as being every whit as good as he really was, if not a little better.

When a man's hard hit, that is about his first thought. He wants the woman to think of him as the finest and best who has ever crossed her path. And before bumping into Miss Mont as he boarded the ship, he had actually never looked twice at a woman.

She was a good sailor, and he had crossed back and forth so many times that he was only seasick when the Old Salt in the story was ill--on the occasion "that the ship went down and all hands were lost."

Ryder accepted his fate manfully on that very first time that they paced the deck together. It was not easy for Ryder to admit that he had met and fallen in love with a woman at first sight. It was opposed to all his well-established theories. At his age he considered himself case-proof.

Yet never had a woman impressed him as did Miss Mont. When they became so quickly such very good friends and she showed plainly that she enjoyed his society, and even took him into her confidence with little urging on his part, Ryder began to see that he would be tempting Providence if he went ashore at New York without letting her know just how he felt toward her.