During the breakfast, Donald was silent but observant, and the most of his observations were of the pretty young girl opposite him. There was a feeling in his breast he had never felt before when he glanced at her; a feeling that caused him to admire her fresh young beauty in face and form and to hunger for possession. The age-old instinct of adolescent youth was awakening within this clean-hearted, red-blooded sea boy, and he was forming new impressions and a new appreciation of the opposite sex. Seventeen is the impressionable age.
McKenzie’s shy glances brought no response from Ruth’s sparkling blue eyes. Her attention was wholly taken up with her brother and Joak, whose peculiar speech and mannerisms gave her much secret delight. Captain Nickerson readily sensed this and he skilfully drew the unconscious McGlashan out for the amusement of his roguish sister. “D’ye mind the day, Joak, when you told me to get the mains’l off her because you couldn’t get your bread dough to rise?”
“Aye, captain, I do that!” replied Joak, stuffing his mouth full of crisp bacon. “Yon was an awfu’ windy day an’ she was jumpin aboot like a lone spud in a wash b’iler! You ken, Miss”—addressing Ruth—“it’s no easy gettin’ a batch o’ dough tae rise if th’ whole place is jumpin’ an’ jigglin’ an’ jooglin’ aboot!” Miss Nickerson nodded sympathetically.
“And your pea soup, Joak,” continued the skipper. “The peas would be as hard as bullets when you started to boil them, but you’d stick a lump of washing soda in the pot and soften them up!”
Joak shook his head vigorously. “Naw, captain,” he retorted vehemently. “I never did that! Sody is awful’ hard on the guts——er, excuse me! I mean, stummick, and it ’ud soon tak’ th’ linin’ aff yer insides. Naw, I saffened them up wi’ a guid soakin’ in warm water. That’s a’!”
Ruth’s face was crimson, but she did not laugh. Joak was taking everything very seriously.
“I’ve heard Judson talk of a number of strange sea dishes with queer names,” she observed. “Cracker-hash, dandy-funk, three-decker-pie, and what was that goose story you used to tell, Judson? That was a new way of cooking.” Donald could have sworn that she winked a roguish eye at her brother.
“Oh, ah, yes ... the goose story,” said Judson taking up the cue. “I don’t think Joak knows how to do that—though he might.... It happened aboard a ship I was on one time. The skipper had invited some friends off to have dinner aboard and had told the cook to get a goose ready for cooking. A while later the old man got a message saying his friends could not come, so he called the cook and said. ‘These people are not coming for dinner to-day so we’ll postpone the goose!’ The cook goes out scratching his head and when he gets forrad he says to the crowd. ‘I knows how to b’ile ’em. I knows how to bake ’em, and I knows how to fry ’em, but I’ll be hanged if I know how to postpone ’em!’” He finished the yarn without a smile. For a moment Joak stared at him in serious perplexity, and then blurted, “I wouldna know how tae postpone it masel’!”
Everybody laughed, while Donald felt like kicking his schoolboy chum for his simple density. Ruth, after enjoying the joke, eased Joak’s discomfiture by explaining the meaning of “postpone.” “Oh, aye, that’s it, is it?” cried McGlashan laughing boisterously. “That’s a good yin—a gey good yin! I don’t remember ever gettin’ that worrd at school. Did we get that yin, Donald?”
Thus appealed to, McKenzie answered with some annoyance, “Of course you did! You must have forgotton.”