“I’m glad you are feeling better, my dear,” she said. “It will do you good to get on deck as soon as possible. The salt air works wonders.”
So it was decided that Lucile should have a light supper brought her in the cabin, for she was beginning to develop an appetite, after which she was to go on deck and test the revivifying power of salt sea air, mixed with a little soft moonlight, for Phil had laughingly prophesied that there would be “a peach of a moon to-night.”
When Lucile, pale of face and lips and a trifle shaky and trembly on her feet, stepped from her cabin into the full beauty of a cloudless night, she turned to her friends with the first smile they had seen for ages—or so it seemed to them.
“Girls, it’s good to be alive again!” she stated, fervently.
“Huh, you haven’t been dead yet,” grunted Phil.
“Well, I thought I was going to die, which is as bad,” she retorted, with spirit. “But I’m going to live now, my brother, if only to disappoint you,” she added.
“My, what a disposition!” said Evelyn, with a sad shake of her head, and Jessie murmured, with an encouraging pat, “Cheer up, Lucy; you are far from being a dead one yet.”
Lucile sank into the chair they had so carefully prepared for her with a low laugh. “They are all pickin’ on me,” she said, plaintively. “But what do we care, on such a night? Just look at that sky,” and, leaning forward, with 82 her hand on the rail, she let her gaze wander hungrily out over the water, where the long, graceful combers caught the reflected, starry light and passed it on till it merged in the silvery pathway of the moon, which, as Phil had prophesied, was at its height. She sat quite still, realizing as she had never done before the utter grandeur, the awe-inspiring majesty of the ocean.
“It’s enough to make one sentimental, isn’t it?” said Jessie, at her elbow. “Wouldn’t it be nice if Jack were here?” she added, innocently.
“Oh, bother!” said Lucile, leaning back with a contented sigh. “He would spoil everything. He would probably want to talk, and I can’t.”