“Know who?”
“Men.” Then, as Hildegarde made no instant rejoinder, “I was alone,” the woman added, so pointedly that Hildegarde hastened to say, “I’m alone, too.”
But the other seemed not to believe this, or, at least, to take no account of it. “Last night wasn’t my first battle,” she said; “I’ve been in the wars all my life,” and with a weary superiority she went back to her berth.
Ah, she was one of those women with a standing grievance! Hildegarde felt for her the cheerful forbearance of the person who unconsciously takes his own immunity from rancor as a tribute to his nice disposition or his balanced judgment.
Up on deck a flood of sunshine, a dazzling sea, a green shore not yet very far away, a distant background of snowcapped mountains.
On board the Los Angeles few people yet afoot. There was Curlyhead dashing about, responding to Hildegarde’s good-morning with a cheerful oath. She took hold of him. “Listen to me,” she said, “you are not to say such horrible things.”
“Shut up!” and more of the same sort. She dropped the child with precipitation and walked to the ship’s side. Those two men just there by the life-boat, had they heard the dreadful words? She was hot at the thought. They seemed to be talking about the boy now, that spectacled man and his friend. The friend must have a cold or something wrong with him, for even on this glorious morning he kept his arctic cap pulled down over his neck, and his overcoat “storm collar” turned up above his ears. Instead of taking a constitutional before breakfast, there he was lounging behind the life-boat. The spectacled man got tired of so sluggish a companion. He left the muffled-up figure and began to tramp about by himself. Hildegarde passed him with “good-morning.” There was her steamer-chair in the corner. She ought to get it out and place it before the deck overflowed.
The spectacled man lent a hand.
“Well, we did get off,” he said.
“Yes. When was it?”