"Ah, in what part? Boston, I presume?"
"Yes, sir, Boston, Lynn, Salem; but we lived at Lynn."
Here Bess broke in to briefly explain the double nationality claimed by the girls, and for a rather embarrassing minute the attention of the table seemed concentrated upon them. Amid the fusillade of question and comment Hope noticed Lady Moreham's eyes suddenly flash and soften—she could almost have thought there were tears in them, indeed. But why? At any rate, she began to think there might be some redeeming traits, even in this "specimen of British aristocracy."
CHAPTER V.
"ON THE BAY OF BISCAY, O!"
The meal was scarcely over, when there was a perceptible change in the movement of the steamship, for, no longer sheltered by the Isle of Wight, they soon discovered that what they had always heard of the broad English Channel is true, and found it one of the roughest sheets of water known. Faith soon began to look "white around the gills," as Mr. Malcolm teasingly informed her, and when she said she "thought she would go and look after Hafiz," Hope rallied and ridiculed her, well backed by Dwight, who was a born sailor; but Bess evidently sympathized with her, and began herself to look wan.
Faith had gone indoors—they were on the forward deck upon which the captain's cabin, or "library," opened, and Hope had been watching her zig-zag progress across it, laughing merrily, when, with the suddenness of a lightning-stroke, everything grew black and began to spin around her. She looked helplessly at Dwight, whose grinning face was like that of a whirling dervish, made a little lurch forward, and would have fallen, but that watchful Mr. Malcolm caught her just in time. He at once sent a boy for the stewardess, and they soon had the half-unconscious girl safe inside her own stateroom door, where Faith looked up drowsily from her little bed to remark,
"Why, what's the matter? Did she get hurt?"
"Oh, no, only faint," returned the woman smiling broadly, while she unfastened Hope's gown and assisted her upon the other bed. "There's the pair of you."
"Two fools!" remarked the parrot, with such appropriateness that even Hope had to join feebly in the woman's jolly laughter, while Faith plucked up strength to gibe a little in return for her sister's attack on deck.