“How different everybody looks to-day—it’s the sunshine.”
“Yes, I think they do look different.” But he did not say it was the sunshine.
“I don’t see my Blumpitty, nor, what’s more important, Mrs. Locke.”
“That’s the woman you’re so much with?”
“Yes. It looks as if she’d gone below.” What did it matter? Nothing mattered now. Miss Mar had a distinct sense of repressing a quite foolish sense of radiant content, not to say elation. How this having a friend along lit up the rude and sordid ship! Not the first time this particular friend had wrought this particular miracle in her sight. The fact that Louis’s eyes rested on things constrained them to reveal an “interestingness” unsuspected before.
“There are my three financiers,” she whispered. “They aren’t as splendid as your Don Quixote, but they’re very nice to me at table.”
“I’m relieved to hear you’ve found some one who contrives to be ‘nice’ there. I’ve wondered how you were getting on,” he chuckled.
The temptation to confess was strong upon her. But no. Even Louis would be obliged to say, “I told you so.”
“At first,” she said, with the detached air of the investigator, “I watched my neighbors, because everything they did was so surprising. But by and by I got so I could see nice distinctions and fine shades. Some of the roughest-looking haven’t by any means the roughest manners.”