The sight, and smell, and sound of the glittering, tumbling sea must have done me good. After last night's and Thursday night's bad dreams and worse wakings, I ought to be as sleepy as a dormouse. Yet I feel quite fresh and keen.
Not that to-day has been any great improvement on yesterday and the day before. To begin with, it put me quite out of temper, at Traxelby station, to see how Susan was far too nasty to Gibson, and how Gibson was far too nice to Susan. And Gibson couldn't possibly have been clumsier in his attempt to give me his address on the sly. It was a miracle that Susan didn't see.
I kept Susan beside me all the way to Newhaven, and also on the boat. It was a turbine steamer, and the sea was smooth, and I ought to have enjoyed the crossing immensely. But I didn't.
Of course, the reason was Susan. We hadn't fairly lost sight of that blinding, towering white cliff above Seaford before Susan said tragically in my ear:
"Oh, Miss, I have such a dreadful feeling!"
Never before have I been cruel to the sea-sick. But it was altogether too much that Susan, who has always been the best sailor in the world, should begin to work up a squeamishness on a turbine, with the sun shining and the sea as calm as a pond, and no one ill, not even the trippers in ready-made yachting-suits. I felt she was doing it just to be important, and interesting, and difficult.
"Nonsense, Susan!" I said, quite roughly: "it's perfectly ridiculous. Don't think about it, and you'll be all right."
"I don't mean that I'm took bad, Miss," said Susan. And she looked aggrieved. Probably it was my fancy; but, in her injured dignity, there seemed to be a blend of Susan Briggs with the future Lady Ruddington.
"What do you mean, then?" I asked grudgingly.
She did not answer at once. When she did, she said mysteriously: