“If I might make so bold, sir,” he said at last, “you have only yourself to thank for what people think. You have acted queerly more than once, sir.”
“A fact,” Gregory murmured; “a damnable fact!”
“And I don’t hold,” the man went on, “with this sitting in the smoking room, taking a drink with anybody who comes along, and going down to the second class, when there’s plenty of your own sort on board, sir.”
“You’re a sound fellow, Perkins,” Gregory admitted, as he swung out of his bunk. “Is my bath ready?”
“Waiting, sir.”
“And, Perkins,” Gregory continued, as he struggled into his dressing gown, “some time this morning I want you to bring me some packing cloth and get the carpenter to find you a box. I can’t take my Image about like that. I’m going to send it home to my father—a little souvenir of my visit to China. I think it might brighten up the household.”
“I’ll fetch you the packing cloth and box, sir, with pleasure,” Perkins assented, looking up at the Image dubiously, “but if it belonged to me I know what I should do with it.”
Gregory paused enquiringly. The steward was still looking over the rail of the bunk with an expression of disgust.
“I should chuck it overboard and have done with it, sir.”
“But it is valuable,” Gregory expostulated, swinging his towel; “worth a lot of money, Perkins. No one knows quite how much but it’s worth a great deal of money.”