Not well! The girl laughed gayly. But as she drew her friend out upon the guards and to her stateroom's rear door she talked with a soft earnestness all the way.
"I don't see how I could have been so blind! If he saw those things why couldn't I see them? I thought of them, over and over; but always the other things crowded them back into the dark—and there was plenty of dark. He's right, my father does hold the key, and if I'd seen things as I see them now I'd have made the twins give in, somehow, long ago. If you should see mammy Joy, or Phyllis, or both, please send them to me."
She shut herself in, dropped to the berth's side, and let the tears run wild. The nurse and the still handsome Phyllis appeared promptly, together. But they found her full of sparkle; so full that Phyllis saw under the mask; a mask she herself had worn so often in her youth under a like desperation.
"Mammy," said her mistress, "want to go somewhere with your baby, about sundown this evening?"
For explanation the old woman glanced at Phyllis, but Phyllis's eyes were on Ramsey with a light whose burning carried old Joy's memory back twenty years. "Sundown?" echoed the nurse to gain time, "yass'm, o' co'se, ef—but, missie—sundown—dat mean' Natchez. You cayn't be goin' asho' whah Cap'm Hugh dess tell Phyllis yo' ma comin' aboa'd?"
"Not ashore to stay," was the blithe reply as Phyllis aided the change of dress. "There'll be two or three of us."
"Well, o' co'se, ef you needs me. Wha' fo' you gwine?"
"To see the twins," sang Ramsey, "if we go at all."
Then Phyllis knew she was trusted, and while with a puzzled frown the nurse watched her manipulate hooks and eyes she blandly asked: "Miss Ramsey, if Cap'm Hugh give' me leave kin I go too?"
"Yes, you might ask him. Nobody's going unless he goes."