"It won't matter if he does! You hadn't written anything on it!"
"Did you look on both sides of it?"
"I—I think so; of course, I must have. Did you write on the other side?"
"I don't know which the other side is that you refer to," she answered with some show of anger. "There were two sides, you know. Still, it can't much matter now whether it had any sides or not."
This was very perplexing, the words no more so than the way she looked at me while pronouncing them. Yet I hardly thought it should give her as much concern as our leaky boat. The storm had grown worse, and more than once she glanced anxiously at the portholes whose glass, over half the time, were submerged by swirls of greenish water.
"It'll turn out all right," I said, gently. "And you mustn't be afraid of this storm."
"I'm not afraid!"
"Yes, you are," I tenderly persisted, "but your skipper looks like a man who'll bring us through."
"Your concern is most flattering," she frigidly replied. "But fear of storms, and distress over the unhappiness one may be causing others, are quite different phases of emotion."
"I stand corrected and rebuked," I humbly acknowledged. "Yet I want you to know that my concern springs from a deeper source than flattery. I want honestly to assure you——"