I said this with an intent to be sociable, and make, the child feel at ease, but no such effort was necessary.
“There is nothing to do diffelunt,” she said, with a bewitching smile. “You just do what you would in your own house.”
It was the first really good advice I had had concerning my steamer manners, and I put it away among my other first impressions for future use.
Then Jane’s mother appeared, and I learned that she occupied the next stateroom, and that she hoped Jane would not annoy me, and that she was glad I liked children, and that she had three, and that they crossed every year, and that if I wanted anything at all I was to ask her for it. Then she put a few polite questions to me, and duly envied me my first impressions, and returned to her other babies.
Jane proved a most delightful roommate, and, as she was never intrusive or troublesome, I felt that I had drawn a prize in the ship’s lottery.
The morning of the second day I rose with a determination to get to work. I had no intention of dawdling, and, moreover, I had much to do. In the first place, I wanted to get settled in my deck-chair, in that regulation bent-mummy position so often pictured in summer novels, and study my fellow-passengers. I had been told that nothing was so much fun as to study people on deck. Then I had many letters to write and many books to read. I wanted to learn how to compute the ship’s log, and how to talk casually of “knots.” After all these had been accomplished, I intended to plan out my itinerary for the summer. This I wanted to do after I was out of all danger of advice from friends at home and before I made the acquaintance of any one on board who might attempt to advise me.
So determined was I to plan my own trip that I would have been glad to get out on a desert island and wait there for the next steamer, rather than have any assistance in the matter of laying out my route.
Immediately after breakfast, therefore, arrayed in correct steamer costume, and carrying rug, pillow, paper-covered novel, veil, fur boa, and two magazines, I went to my deck-chair and prepared to camp out for the morning. As the deck steward was not about, I tried to arrange my much desired mummy effect myself. Technique seemed lacking in my efforts, and, slightly embarrassed at my inability to manage the refractory rug, I looked up to see Jane watching me.
“You mustn’t put the rug over you,” she explained, in her kind little way. “You must put yourself over the rug.”
At her advice I got out of the chair, and she spread the rug smoothly in it.