“Ladies and gents, mostly ladies, welcome to my new ship—the Water Lily. Bein’ old an’ seasoned in the knowledge of navigation I’ll do my duty to the death. Anybody wishin’ to consult me will find me on the bridge.”
With a wave of his cap the queer old fellow stumped away to the crooked stairway, which he climbed by means of the baluster instead of the steps, his crutches thump-thumping along behind him.
By “bridge” he meant the forward point of the upper deck, or roof of the cabin, and there he proceeded to rig up a sort of “house” with pieces of the awning in which there had been inserted panes of glass.
But the effect of his address was to put all these strangers at ease, for none could help laughing at his happy pomposity, and after people laugh together once stiffness disappears.
Gerald Blank promptly followed Melvin Cook to Jim’s little engine-room on the tender, and the colored folks as promptly followed him. Their own bunks were to be on the small boat and Chloe was anxious to see what they were like.
Then Mrs. Bruce roused from her silence and asked Aunt Betty about the provisions that had been brought on board and where she might find them. She had been asked to join the party as housekeeper, really for Mabel’s sake, from whom she couldn’t be separated now, and because Dorothy had argued:
“That dear woman loves to cook better than anything else. She always did. Now she hasn’t anybody left to cook for, ’cept Mabel, and she’ll forget to cry when she has to get a dinner for lots of hungry sailors.”
The first sight of Mrs. Bruce’s sad face, that morning, had been most depressing; and she was relieved to find a change in its aspect as the woman roused to action. There hadn’t been much breakfast eaten by anybody and Dorothy had begged her old friend to:
“Just give us lots of goodies, this first meal, Mrs. Bruce, no matter if we have to do with less afterwards. You see—three hundred dollars isn’t so very much——”
“It seems a lot to me, now,” sighed the widow.