"I don't see why. Who'll it fall to next? You?"
"No, the first clerk."
Double disappointment. "But you; you'll still look after us passengers and help him, too, won't you?"
"I may."
She knew it! Somehow he was to share with the mate and the clerk the command of the boat!
"Mr. Hugh"—they moved on, with Joy at a discreet distance—"you're in a hurry—so am I; but I ought to tell you, though of course it's just ridiculous for us—for me—to think I've ever helped you or can help you in any of these things or in anything—I—oh—I can't help you, or play help you, any more."
Cruel word in a cruel moment. She felt it so and expected him to show the same feeling. But instead he halted in the lamplight of a passageway to the cabin and confronted her with the widest, most formidable gaze, not her father's, she had ever met. He seemed absolutely majestic. It was very absurd for one so young and—stumpy—to seem majestic, yet there he stood, truly so. Partly for that reason she could not so much as smile; but partly, too, it was because she felt herself so guiltily frivolous, having anything to say to him, or even standing in his gaze, gazing into it, while his father, her brother, and the bishop lay as they were lying in their several rooms so close overhead.
"You can help me," he said in his magisterial voice, so deep yet so soft. "You will. You must. I cannot spare you."
Did any one ever! She tossed a faint defiance: "I can't. No. I won't—can't—ever again, against my own kin."
"There are things stronger than kin."