"My own name!" cried the young man.
"Is it possible?" cried the blue beauty. "What a coincidence! How striking! charming!"
She made no offer of money, and Brown invested his own funds in a passage and supper ticket.
"You dear creature!" cried the lady, when he handed them to her, "you are very attentive. But there was no necessity for this supper ticket. I am the least eater in the world."
She said nothing about the cost of the tickets; and how could Brown broach the subject?
"There's that bell, at last!" she cried, when the supper bell rang; "do let's hurry down, Brown, for people are so rude and eager on board steamboats, that unless you move quick you lose your chance."
Brown was hurried along by his fair friend, and she struggled through the crowd till she headed the column and got an excellent seat at the table. Our sandy-haired friend had exalted opinions of the delicacy of female appetites; he had never helped ladies at a ball, or seen them in a pantry at luncheon time, and fancied they fed as lightly as canary birds. He was rather glad to hear Fanny make that remark about the supper ticket on the promenade deck. But now he found she could eat. The cold drops of perspiration stood upon his forehead as he watched the evidences of her voracity. She was helped four times, by the captain, to beefsteak—no miniature slices either, but huge, broad cubes of solid flesh. A dish of oysters attracted her eye, and she gobbled them up every one. Toast and hot bread disappeared before her ravenous appetite. Sponge and pound cake were despatched with fearful celerity. She took up the attention of one particular nigger, and he looked weary and collapsed when the supper was finished.
Yet, after all this, Fanny paraded the deck, and had the heart to talk about the "orbs of heaven," and Shelley, and Byron, and Tennyson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Fanny Ellsler, and Schiller. Brown was very glad when she retired to the lady's cabin.
The morning he rose late, purposely to avoid her till the boat touched the wharf. He engaged a carriage and hunted up the lady's baggage; fortunately there was not much of it. This done, he escorted her on shore, and handed her into the coach.
"Now, then," said the one-eyed driver,—he had recently lost his eye in a fight, on the first night of his return from Blackwell's Island,—"where away? Oyster House, Merrikin, or Globe?"