“Well, of course hers had diamond fringe, because she is a princess. She had a few of her spare boxes of diamonds made up on purpose, and she found she had just enough to trim the polonaise with, without having to touch her necklaces, and bracelets, and tiaras, and things. But diamond fringe is not generally worn, and I am afraid I have none by me just now. I can show you some pearl embroidery, if that will do, or some real Brussels lace.”
As I turned to search for a strip of tatting in my workbag, which was to do duty for Brussels lace, I met the steady look of a pair of keen dark eyes, watching my proceedings from an embarrassingly short distance. They belonged to a gentlemanly, slight-framed man, whom I had not noticed before, and who must have joined us a few days previously at Galle. He was leaning on the back of a friend’s chair—the friend being elderly, and dozing over a magazine on his knee, with his chin so buried in his shirt front that his grey beard tickled his nose—and he was resting all his weight on his folded arms, and looked as if he had been watching me for any length of time. There was something in his face which (without taking any offensive liberty with mine) was so amused and so comical, and I myself felt so extremely silly, caught unawares at my childish games, that I could not help laughing. At this he took his arms from his chair back, and pulled off his hat hurriedly; and I, at the same moment, scrambled to my feet and tilted the counter over, to the consternation and disgust of my little customers.
“Oh,” he exclaimed, taking two long steps into the “shop,” and putting our apparatus in order again, “I am so sorry! I did not know I was an eavesdropper until you surprised me just now. I was so interested in the mimicry of your little companions, and to see you amusing them so prettily. Is not the child the mother of the woman, as well as the father of the man? I was just thinking that, when you turned round, and showed me how rude I was.”
I have always considered that if gentle breeding shows itself in any physical peculiarity at all, it is in the quality and purity of one’s voice and accent. Tom, though his voice was deep and sonorous, had that clear, incisive crispness of speech which is so expressively authoritative, as well as so musical to listen to; and my new friend, with a more delicate and high-pitched organ, resembled him so much in the using of it that I was reminded of him at once, and felt kindly disposed in consequence.
“Do not say that,” I responded frankly. “I deserved to be laughed at, and I am sure you could not help it.”
“I was not laughing at you, I assure you,” he said warmly. “I was wishing I had such a knack of interesting others, as you seem to interest everybody about you. These little ones would have had a very dreary time of it if you had not been on board. Wouldn’t you?” he added, addressing the children, who were staring at him silently, with evident disfavour.
“Are you coming to keep shop?” the youngest inquired, gravely; “or do you want to buy anything? Because we don’t keep gentlemen’s things. Do we, Miss Chamberlayne?”
“No,” I said, smiling; “the tailor’s shop is over the way.”
“I take the hint,” he said, bowing slightly, as he lifted his hat, and showing a pleasant, thoughtful, friendly face, with thin dark hair a little worn away at the temples. And he sauntered to the far end of the deck, and was lost to our view, leaving me with an uneasy suspicion that I had been pert.
I did not see him again—except far away at the dinner-table—until next morning, when, having exhausted the treasures of imagination, in the shape of drapery and jewels, the little girls and I were engaged in a new game, paying calls upon one another in different parts of the ship. They had been to call on me in my cabin, where I had shown them photographs and given them cake and lemonade; and now I was returning their call, sitting on the edge of my chair in a very hot patch of sunlight, with my card-case in my hand, while they gracefully reclined under the shade of the awning on two more chairs, which they vainly endeavoured to fill.