"Thank you," she said distantly, for not only did she hate the smell of brandy but Aunt Alice had enjoined her with peculiar strictness on no account to talk to strange men, "I don't drink."
"Then I'll give the other one some," said the man.
"She too," said Anna-Rose, not changing her position but keeping a drearily watchful eye on him, "is a total abstainer."
"Well, I'll go and fetch some of your warm things for you. Tell me where your cabin is. You haven't got enough on."
"Thank you," said Anna-Rose distantly, "we have quite enough on, considering the occasion. We're dressed for drowning."
The man laughed, and said there would be no drowning, and that they had a splendid captain, and were outdistancing the submarine hand over fist. Anna-Rose didn't believe him, and suspected him of supposing her to be in need of cheering, but a gleam of comfort did in spite of herself steal into her heart.
He went away, and presently came back with a blanket and some pillows.
"If you will sit on the floor," he said, stuffing the pillows behind their backs, during which Anna-Felicitas didn't open her eyes, and her head hung about so limply that it looked as if it might at any moment roll off, "you may at least be as comfortable as you can."
Anna-Rose pointed out, while she helped him arrange Anna-Felicitas's indifferent head on the pillow, that she saw little use in being comfortable just a minute or two before drowning. "Drowning be hanged," said the man.
"That's how Uncle Arthur used to talk," said Anna-Rose, feeling suddenly quite at home, "except that he would have said 'Drowning be damned.'"