"No, I should hope not for many. Yet——"
"Boats' lives," she prompted, "are so uncertain."
"Yes, grandfather thinks——"
"Oh, if only he were here!" She paused to let Hugh notice that she had "were" and "was" in hand at last. Then:
"How long will that boat be?"
"Three hundred and thirty feet. She'll have ten boilers. Her cylinders will be forty-three inches, her stroke eleven feet. She'll carry eighty-five hundred bales of cotton."
"Goodness! How wide will she be?"
"In the beam fifty. Over all, at the wheelhouses, ninety. Her wheels will be forty-five feet in diameter and their buckets nineteen feet span. You still like figures, boats' figures, I hope?"
She still liked, for second choice, to make him, to herself, ridiculous; liked it even now while inwardly laughing and weeping at him for not coming to personal matters infinitely more important. "Go on," she said, "I like cabin figures. How long, wide, and high will the cabin be?"
"Two hundred and sixty-three by nineteen by sixteen."