Her mother smiled with new pain, but while the captain bowed himself away the old man replied: "Come, Miss Ramsey, sit down with me and I'll tell you the story—if we may, madam?—Hugh—some chairs, will you?"
Ramsey sprang to Hugh's aid, but her brother had a mind for mutiny. "You told me," he accused his mother, "that I could go watch them play cards!"
"Yes?" she asked in a pretty irony; "well, then, of co'se, sisteh or no sisteh, you muz' instan'ly go!" The steady tinkle of the sister's laughter as she passed with a chair provoked her own: "Yes, go! Me, I'll rimmain with her till Joy"—the nurse—"ritturn from suppeh."
The boy went, flinging back for a last word: "You want to hear the story as bad as Ramsey does!"
"'Tis true!" she brightly said to the old gentleman. "Since all those nine year', me, I've want' to hear the Courteney side of that!"—little supposing that this was what neither she nor Ramsey would then or ever quite lay hold upon.
"No," laughed the irrelevant girl to the old man, "you sit here." She faced him up-stream, her mother on his "stabboard," as she said, herself on his "labboard," and Hugh on her left, "labboardest of all." But—to Hugh—"now, wait—wait! If I'm on your stabboard—how can you be—on my lab'—? Oh, yes, I see!" She dropped into her chair and, to Hugh's great weariness, laughed till her curls fell on her cheeks, larboard and starboard by turns.
Yet she ceased sooner than any one had hoped and the four sat silent while several ladies sauntered past on the arms of escorts, all highly entertained to see such cordiality between any Hayles and the Courteneys. One trio that paused near by to catch some Hayle or Courteney utterance praised aloud the enchantment of the night and of the boat's speed, and as they strolled on again, having caught nothing, Ramsey breathed softly to the old man:
"They can't describe it! Nobody can! I've tried!"
Through four or five breathings of the giant chimneys she waited for the story she was not to hear, and at length herself broke silence. "I think," she said, "this boat is the most wonderful thing in the world."
No one rejoined that it was or was not. "Don't you?" she airily challenged the "labboardest of all," defensively letting herself realize how nearly a woman she was, how merely a boy was he.