“Sit down,” she said, briefly, and I obeyed.
Cleverly, then, she flung up the sides and tucked in the corners, until the rug swathed me in true seventeenth-trip fashion. Jane proceeded to arrange my pillow and the other odds and ends of comfort. She disapproved, however, of my reading-matter.
“Magazines won’t stay open,” she observed, “and paper books won’t, eever.”
Jane’s few mispronunciations were among her chiefest charms.
“But it won’t matter,” she added cheerfully. “You won’t read, anyhow.”
This reminded me that I had no intention of reading, being there for the purpose of studying my fellow-passengers.
I was still obsessed by that strange sensation of inanition.
Although beatifically serene and abnormally good-natured, I felt an utter aversion to exertion of any kind, mental, moral, or physical. Even the thought of studying my fellow-travellers seemed a task too arduous to contemplate.
And so I sat there all the morning and not a fellow-traveller was studied.
“This won’t do,” I said to myself, severely, after luncheon. “Here you are, not a hint of sea-sickness, the day is perfect, you know how to adjust your rug, and all conditions are favorable. You must study your fellow-travellers.”