"Lord bless you, miss, I'm in a perfect fever about you. But please get out of my cabin, the engineers are a-looking over here, and making fun of us."
"Pah! what you care for zengeneers! If zey laugh, you can blow zem viz ze boxe; you are brave. Vous êtes un vrai Hercule!"
"Anything you like, miss, if you'll only get out of my cabin."
"Monsieur Thompe-sonne," cried the girl, now thoroughly roused, and indifferent to any consequences to herself or the man she admired, "Ger-rrr-ai, do you lofe me?"
"Lord bless you, miss, I adore you; but do, if you please, get out of my cabin."
After much persuasion she finally left his presence, but not until she had extorted from him the word "yes," in reply to her inquiry, "Do you lofe me?" It appeared that she had, from some French novel, taken the idea that all the English law required was the repeating of the word "yes" on the part of the man; evidently the author must have taken a passage from the marriage service and introduced it in his story as "a manner and custom of the John Boule," as after Jerry had said that word she became as submissive as a slave, and that evening told her mistress, in great confidence, "zat she was going to be married to ze brave Monsieur Thompe-sonne as soon as zey arrived."
As the time passed Miss Barbara became known to all the crew, and it was a sight that would have moved a misanthrope to see the pretty infant tyrannizing over the men in her tiny way. As to Thompson, he was her slave, and poured out the choicest treasures he possessed for her amusement, it being nothing uncommon to see Cops sitting upon the image of the God Buddha, and nursing the God Fo, whom she called "a nice fat little boy," while an admiring crowd of sailors watched her footsteps, and removed every rope yarn from her path whenever she honoured them by extending her promenade round the forecastle.
Jerry was exceedingly particular how he treated the bonne; in fact, upon all occasions he what the Irish term "blarnied" her, in order that she might keep Miss Cop's secret; while she, imagining he was lawfully engaged to marry her according to English custom, gave him a little latitude, and overlooked many small offences which otherwise she would have resented.
"Upon my word, you get more beautiful every day," he observed to Adèle one morning when she brought Cops forward to feed her bird. "I wonder how it is you haven't got married before this?"