Beatrice, the second daughter, had, as has been noted, a bookish turn. If she had chosen to study surgery she would have been a ruthless vivisector. As a result of this inquiring bent, she had an astonishing, and sometimes rather disconcerting, knowledge of things as they are. But to offset the touch of the blue-stocking, she owned a pair of long-lashed eyes that kindled quickly at any torch of sentiment, and they were set in a face of uncommon sweetness—winsomeness, one would say, if the word were not so desperately outworn.
Edith, for whose sake Billy Grisdale was cutting a good half of his Sophomore year, was a replica, in rounder lines and easier curves, of her sister Alicia. Having been carefully held back to give her older sisters a clear field, she was still something of a tomboy, but her very roughnesses were lovable, and Billy's callow folly found, it must be admitted, its full and sufficient excuse in its object.
It was Edie Van Tromp, roaming the yacht like a restless bit of misdirected energy, as was her custom, who came to fling herself into the steamer chair next to mine; this in the afternoon of the day when John Grey had given me still less cause to love Miss Mehitable Gilmore.
"I'm bored, Mr. Richard Preble—bored to extinction!" she gasped, fanning herself with a vigor that was all her own. "Is nothing ever going to happen on this tiresome ship?"
"There are things happening all the time, if we only have eyes to perceive them," I told her, laughing. "In your own case, for example, there is Billy Grisdale. To an interested and sympathetic onlooker like myself it would seem that he is constantly happening in as many different ways as he can devise."
"Oh, Billy—yes," she admitted, with pouting emphasis. Then, with a great show of confidence: "Uncle Dick—I may call you Uncle Dick, if I want to, mayn't I?—if you were only a little older and grayer I might tell you something."
"Tell me anyhow," I urged. "I am old enough to be perfectly safe, don't you think?"
"It's Billy, and you started it," she went on pertly. "That boy is fairly worrying the life out of me. Positively, I'm getting the dreadful habit of carrying my head on my shoulder. He—he's always just there, you know, if I look around."
"Is that why you are bored?"
"I suppose it is; it must be. Nothing can ever come of it, of course. Billy is nothing but just a handsome, good-natured, sweet-tempered boy. It would be years and years, and then more years before——"