“And seasickish headaches,” added Babe. “Isn’t it almost time for bouillon? The doctor told me to keep eating and I’d be all right.”
“There’s the bugle for it this minute,” said Madeline, “and after that I propose a stunt. Let’s all go off separately and see what excitement we can unearth,—who can unearth the most, I mean. I don’t agree with you about the possibilities of shipboard. A town of seven hundred people certainly has possibilities, and that’s what we are,—a floating town. In order to make the contest more exciting, let’s give the winner a chance to say where we shall go first from Glasgow.”
“Goodie!” cried Babbie. “That’s something like. I knew you’d think up things to do, Madeline. Do you two invalids feel equal to so much exertion?”
The invalids declared that after they had had their mid-afternoon repast they should feel equal to anything, and five minutes later the four chairs were deserted.
“Time limit, two hours,” called Madeline, as she disappeared around the corner. “Meet in our chairs, of course.”
Betty lingered a little. Madeline’s plan sounded very amusing, but she hadn’t much idea how to carry out her part of it. She sauntered slowly down the deck, past the row of steamer chairs, many of whose occupants smiled and nodded at her as she passed. They might be very exciting people, Betty reflected, but she should never find it out. Madeline could do that sort of thing, not she. At the end of the deck Betty stopped and leaning over the railing looked off out to sea, wondering what Will and Nan and the Smallest Sister were doing just then. Presently her glance fell to the deck below. It was full of the queerest people. They were having a mid-afternoon lunch too,—drinking it with gusto out of big tin cups. Most of them were men, but near the cabin-door sprawled several children, and a few women, with bright-colored shawls over their heads, sunned themselves by the railing.
“Oh, that must be the steerage!” thought Betty, and didn’t know she had said it out loud until somebody answered her.
“Yes, that’s the steerage,” said a deep voice close to her elbow. “Should you like to go down and see what the steerage is like?”
Betty looked around and recognized the senator who had kept the boat waiting.
“Why—yes,” she began, blushing at the idea of talking to such a great man. “I should like to see it, only—isn’t it dreadfully dirty?”