Afterward, in Peter's stateroom, I asked him what he had been hinting at in his exchange with Murray.
"Oh, we just talk," he replied, rolling into his berth with a ponderous sigh of satisfaction.
"I heard you," I snapped. "But of what?"
There was a dim light in his eyes, buried behind rolling flaps of blubber.
"We just talk," he murmured. "Murray talks, andt I talk. Murray, he likes to talk, ja."
I was up early in the morning, but Mistress O'Donnell and my great-uncle were before me. As I climbed to the poop I saw them standing by the weather rail, Murray expressing deference in every line of his straight figure and handsome, old-young face, the little maid eying him with a comical mixture of antipathy and respect.
The wind had veered in the night, providentially for us, and we were running free, the James riding the easy swell with the dash of a race-horse. We were out of sight of land.
My great-uncle clapped his hand on my shoulder in his best paternal manner, and Mistress O'Donnell gave me a shy look that I read to reflect a double attitude of mind similar to that she evidenced for him.
"Here is my nephew, who will settle all your remaining doubts, Mistress Moira," proclaimed Murray; "and with your leave I'll be about my morning inspection—for we must maintain a high level of discipline, since we sail on the king's errand and are therefore the king's ship."
She watched his retreating back with a kind of fascination.