A quick glance of consternation passed between Jessie and Evelyn, and the latter turned to Lucile with dismay in her uplifted eyebrows.
“Seasick?” she inquired in a still, small voice.
Lucile nodded grimly. “Rather,” she answered. “Guess I’m going to die.”
“Don’t say that,” begged the girls, stifling a desire to laugh and cry at once.
“Oh, Lucy, dear, what can we do?” said Jessie, putting a comforting arm about her friend, whose complexion had grown a peculiar, greenish-gray color in the last few moments. “Don’t you think you had better go below? Maybe if you lie flat on your back you will feel better. Come, dear.”
“I knew I’d go and spoil everything by getting seasick,” moaned Lucile, in the same toneless voice, and then, as a flash of her old saving humor came to the front, she turned to the girls with a suggestion of a smile. “I suppose I’ll have to come to the lemon and herring,” she said. 80
She was deathly sick all the rest of that day and most of the next, and it was not till near nightfall of the second day that she began to feel the first faint desire to live.
Jessie and Evelyn had wandered about aimlessly all the time, looking, as Phil said, as if some one had just pronounced a death sentence upon them. Though they had become acquainted with a great many of the passengers, no one of them had been able to coax a smile to the girls’ long faces. In spite of Phil’s uncivil remarks, it must be noted that even the wondrous engine-room had lost much of its charm for him and he had cut his visit short, merely to ask if they, meaning his father and mother, thought it would not help some to get Lucile on deck—fresh air—etc., etc.
Toward evening the cause of all this unrest opened heavy eyes upon a tossing gray world and turned her head languidly toward the porthole.
At the slight sound, Evelyn, who had been sitting, chin in hand, gazing gloomingly out to sea, rose quickly and ran to the side of the bed.