“Oh-ho, madam! Don’t you know that we sailors can use a needle as well as any woman. Here let me show you.”
This was an admirable opportunity for seating himself on the bench beside her; and Rudolph, who had felt a strange hesitation about doing so before, now took the plunge, and placed himself on the end of the wooden seat.
“What is this? An antimacassar?”
“No. A cooking apron.”
“How interesting! Ladies ought not to make such things. They should do things that want lots of bundles of silks of all sorts of colors. This isn’t sufficiently decorative.”
“You mean fancy-work!” exclaimed Mabin with an expression of horror. “I hate fancy-work!”
“Girls who do fancy-work can always give a fellow things they have made themselves to remember them by. I have a heap of tobacco pouches, all very pretty and too good to use. Now you couldn’t give a fellow a cooking apron, to remember you by, could you?”
“I shouldn’t want anybody to remember me—with a lot of other girls!” retorted Mabin fiercely.
And then she felt the blood rush to her cheeks, and she thrust the needle-case quickly into his hands.
“Find one now, find one!” cried she imperiously, “and let me see what you can do. I believe you are only boasting when you say you can sew.”