“It’s a pity!” she exclaimed, rising breathless. “I do ’ate losing things myself. Maybe you dropped ’em on deck—them clasps are so rotten.”
The next day I confided my loss to the stewardess, who came into the cabin and instituted a most business-like investigation.
“If you say you had them, and hung them on your pin-cushion night afore last, they’re bound to be in this cabin, and I’m bound to find them!” she announced with an air of invincible determination. After examining all my property, she proceeded to turn out madame’s belongings with reckless disrespect, violently shaking her gowns and petticoats.
“Ah! ha!” she exclaimed, as suddenly, with a clinking sound, my necklace fell out of the pocket of a gorgeous bath-gown. “I thought as much!” and she nodded at me with terrible significance; “now you lock them up, miss.”
“But, stewardess, they are only imitation,” I protested, “and it must have been a mistake.”
“I don’t hold with those sort of mistakes,” she sternly declared. “Your pretty sister asked me to keep an eye on you, and so I have. To-morrow madame goes ashore, and a good riddance. Her liquor bill would frighten a barman, and after to-morrow, Miss Harlowe, you will have the cabin to yourself.”
I do not know if madame discovered that her dressing-gown had been rifled; at any rate, she made no sign, and before she landed bade me an affectionate farewell, assuring me that “I was a real good, decent little girl—and she could go round the world with me!”
The important Egyptian crowd went ashore with piles of luggage, maids, and valets, bent on a season in Cairo, or a trip to Assouan, or even Khartoum. The remnant left was comparatively a small number; officers and officials and planters going East, at the end of their leave, to brave the horrors of approaching hot weather. An Eastern moon lighted us down the Red Sea, and we had the piano and music on deck. I played most of the accompaniments, and always those for Mr. Sandars, who had a beautiful tenor voice and sang some of Wagner’s songs—especially the prize song from the Meistersinger—delightfully. By this time I had become well acquainted with him and his uncle; indeed, they seemed like old friends, particularly the uncle, who had a knack of absorbing my confidences. I told him all about home, Linda and her fiancé (General Pontifex, it turned out, had been fag to the Admiral, and invariably burnt his toast and boots) and our losses. I described our neighbours, our dogs, and even Methusalem, the aged but active pony. In the mornings I played deck quoits with Mr. Sandars as partner, and in the evenings after dinner paced up and down the deck with the General, his uncle.
Besides these, I had made the acquaintance of two ladies—Mrs. Wallace and Mrs. Mason—wives of officials in Madras, who also sat at our table, and were charming to me. Oh, how I dreaded the end of the trip, when I should lose my new friends, and be once more a castaway amongst total strangers.
The evening before we landed, General Pontifex begged me to give him my address, and also not to think it a liberty if he ventured to advise me in one matter. This, I was amazed to learn, was a request not to wear my beautiful pearls every day, and in all companies.