"Not at all. Why should you?" Adrian's tone was the essence of courtesy.
"Why do you say so then?"
"Ah--there you have me, Miss A.," said Adrian, leaning his head back and looking at her from under the peak of the sou'wester.
"Don't, Addie," urged Crow, on the verge of a fit of giggles, though tears still stood on her lashes; "it's no use. She can't understand, poor thing." Then she went to the door and suggested to their visitor that she should stay inside. She told the girl it was very rough, very uncomfortable, and they did not know where they were.
The Countess saw this was the truth.
"But I'm not afraid," she said. "I can come out too."
"You'll get wet," warned Crow.
The Countess shrugged her shoulders.
"If we must drown," she said, "I prefer to see. Also I can swim. I learned in the swimming baths at----" she broke off. Crow guessed why. She was put into an odd mackintosh coat, and sat outside. Adrian did not want her at all; he hated it; also she was in the way if anything happened. However, she just asserted herself as she always did, and there she was.
Hours went by--hours of black monotony, in which the lost voyagers hardly realized that the wind was harder and the sea rougher. They ceased to talk, but every now and then Adrian and Crow changed places. Also they took hot cocoa at intervals, and "hoped for the day", like St. Paul and his wrecked companions; it was their only hope. The girl was no trouble. She seemed to have courage and endurance; she did not complain, and said "thank you" when they gave her cocoa. The only remark she made in several hours was that she "did not understand why people did all this dirty work for amusement". She said she liked a big yacht with plenty of servants, but a small one was "menial work".