The wan little niece going off with her hands full, paused an instant. “If—if I’m able, thank you.”
“You ought to be more on deck. Of course you’re ill if you stay down there.”
“I couldn’t take care of them if I didn’t,” and she was gone.
The next day the fat purser was so all-pervading that Hildegarde felt herself making up her mind that really something must be done. She had scant patience with girls who complained at this order of infliction. Her firm conviction, “It’s their own fault”; though just how the purser’s foolishness was hers she could not determine.
The afternoon was wild and rough, the smoking-room, packed and noisy. The overflow of men, with a few very subdued-looking women, sat below in the “Ladies’ Saloon”—a feebly-lit, ill-smelling little room, where an aged upright piano kept company with a hurly-burly of freight and three rickety chairs. Hildegarde’s fortitude threatened to give way after two minutes of the foul, close air. But up on deck the purser! and not a soul beside, except the bean-feaster, Mr. Isaiah Joslin, trudging up and down in oilskins, and the arctic cap driven off the bridge by the inclement weather. He sat in the most sheltered corner of the upper deck, obviously asleep, with arms folded and head withdrawn into his collar. The wind rose and the rain swept down upon the place where Hildegarde and the giant (with intervals of purser) had spent the morning. Oh, where was that giant now? She moved her chair to the better shelter near the arctic cap. At least, the purser did it for her, and was altogether so oppressive with his poor little gallantries and what the giant called his “toothsome smile,” that Hildegarde felt, whatever the penalty of his worst displeasure, in another moment she would be doing something more drastic than throwing out broad hints which he either disregarded or affected to consider humorous. She wished now that before moving she had said something even he couldn’t misunderstand. With another man by it would make the purser mad with fury. In any case, hardly fair to subject him publicly to a snubbing as effectual as she saw was going to be necessary. The arctic cap, for all the seeming blindness and deafness of his hidden face, might be listening. So Miss Mar merely drew her tartan plaid up about her shoulders and observed with some gravity that she was going to sleep. The purser took up a romantic attitude at her feet, saying, “Good-night.” Hildegarde jumped up. “I’ll go and see how Mrs. Blumpitty is.”
Getting rid of the purser lent a rapture even to going below. And as she went she smiled, remembering how her mother was comforting herself with the thought of the Blumpittys (“splendid sailors” both of them!) pledged to watch over Miss Mar, and if she were laid low to bring her sustenance on deck out of their private supplies. Four days and no glimpse of either of her guardian angels till this moment, when, rolling through the second saloon on her way to smooth Mrs. Blumpitty’s pillow, Hildegarde, pitching from side to side, clutching at anything within reach to steady herself, caught sight of her stand-by, her protector, the man who was going to minister to her and “see her through,” Blumpitty, with ghastly visage, clinging to the knob of a cabin door like a shipwrecked mariner to a spar. In these days of seclusion poor Mr. Blumpitty had sadly altered, wearing now a yellow-gray beard of some five days’ growth, bristling upon a countenance pea-green and pitiful.
“Oh, is that you?” says the young lady, holding on to the rough board that covered with newspapers at meal time, did duty down here for a dining-table. “How do you do?”
“How—” Blumpitty stopped at that and devoted his entire attention to keeping hold of the knob.
Hildegarde didn’t quite like to go away and leave him to his fate, at a moment so abject in the Blumpitty history, nor did she quite know how to conduct a conversation under these conditions. She decided frankness was best. So, as her friend still clutched and tried to steady himself, she gave way a little to smiling. “I thought you were a seasoned old salt, Mr. Blumpitty.”
He only rolled his yellow eyes—but no, that statement is misleading, for Blumpitty rolled his entire economy. Yet never a word rolled out. Hildegarde, wishing to spare his feelings, added, as she turned to go, “A great many people seem to have been bowled over by the pitching of this ship.”