"We ... l ... l ... it sounds good, and if you can pull it off it will help no end. Go ahead."
The demurely luscious blonde stared disconsolately at the bulletin board, upon which another thirty minutes was being added to the time of arrival of a ship already three hours late. She picked up a book, glanced at its cover, put it down. Her hand moved toward a magazine, drew back, dropped idly into her lap. She sighed, stifled a yawn prettily, leaned backward in her seat—in such a position, Jack noticed, that he could not see into her nostrils—and closed her eyes. And Jack Kinnison, coming visibly to a decision, sat down beside her.
"Pardon me, miss, but I feel just like you look. Can you tell me why convention decrees that two people, stuck in this concourse by arrivals that nobody knows when will arrive, have got to suffer alone when they could have so much more fun suffering together?"
The girl's eyes opened slowly; she was neither startled, nor afraid, nor—it seemed—even interested. In fact, she gazed at him with so much disinterest and for so long a time that he began to wonder—was she going to play sweet and innocent to the end?
"Yes, conventions are stupid, sometimes," she admitted finally, her lovely lips curving into the beginnings of a smile. Her voice, low and sweet, matched perfectly the rest of her charming self. "After all, perfectly nice people do meet informally on shipboard; why not in concourses?"
"Why not, indeed? And I'm perfectly nice people, I assure you. Willi Borden is the name. My friends call me Bill. And you?"
"Beatrice Bailey; Bee for short. Tell me what you like, and we'll talk about it."
"Why talk, when we could be eating? I'm with a guy. He's out on the field somewhere—a big bruiser with a pencil-stripe black mustache. Maybe you saw him talking to me a while back?"
"I think so, now that you mention him. Too big—much too big." The girl spoke carelessly, but managed to make it very clear that Jack Kinnison was just exactly the right size. "Why?"
"I told him I'd have supper with him. Shall we hunt him up and eat together?"