I laughed because I couldn't help it. If the dragoness was upset by the easy swinging of the Andromeda over a sea that was more like a gently undulating mirror than anything else, what would happen to her if we should encounter a gale, or even half a gale?
"You needn't laugh," Beatrice put in reproachfully. "There is nothing funny about seasickness."
"I was laughing at the idea of anybody's being seasick in weather like the present," I explained. "But I fancy it is the old story in the case of Miss Mehitable. If she had nothing worse than a toothache, Conetta would have to play the part of a nurse."
"My-oh!" said my pretty lounging-companion; "it is perfectly easy to see that there is no love lost between you and Miss Mehitable."
"There isn't," I replied shortly; and there that matter rested.
Still later in the day—just at sunset, to be strictly accurate as to the time—there was another compensation for a day which had been hanging rather heavily on my hands. I had gone alone into the yacht's fore-peak, and was wondering if I should have time to smoke another pipe before the dinner call should sound, when a mocking voice behind me said: "Isn't it about time we were quarreling some more?"
I went on filling my pipe without looking around.
"You've been careful not to give me an earlier chance," I said. "How is your Aunt Mehitable by this time?"
"She is able to sit up and take a bit of nourishment." Then: "How you do hate poor Aunt Mehitable, don't you?"