"No. Worse," she said at last, in a low voice.
"You don't mean that she—starves you?"
To his dismay, he saw the tears welling up in the girl's blue eyes, which looked preternaturally large in her wasted face.
"Pretty nearly," said she.
Max stared at her for about the space of a second; then he went behind her, put his hands lightly on her shoulders and inducted her into the chair Dudley had placed for himself at the dinner-table.
"It is evident," said he, gravely, "that Providence has appointed me purveyor of food to you, for this is the second time, within a comparatively short acquaintance, that I have had the honor of providing you with a repast. This time it's quite in the manner of 'The Arabian Nights,' isn't it?"
It was indeed a fairy-tale banquet, this dinner of steak and chip potatoes, followed by méringues à la crême, and finishing up with bread and butter and cheese and celery.
There was enough for two, the only drawback being a deficiency of plates, which Max put right, in homely fashion, by eating his share from the dish. Such a tragedy it was to him to find a beautiful girl who was hungry, actually hungry from want of food, that the appetite he had talked so much about failed him, and he found it difficult to eat his share and to keep up the light tone of talk which he judged to be necessary to the situation.
He wanted to ask her a hundred questions about the people at the wharf and the awful thing which had happened there; but none of these subjects seemed appropriate to the dinner-table, and Max decided to leave them to another and a better opportunity.
In the meanwhile he was getting more forgetful of Dudley's warning every moment. Carrie seemed to guess his feelings, and to be grateful for them. She said very little, but she listened and she laughed, and gave him such pretty, touching glances, such half-mournful, half-merry looks when she thought he was not looking, that by the time they came to the cheese he was in a state of infatuation, in which he forgot to notice what a very long ten minutes Dudley was giving them.