"I want to stay and hear it," whined Ramsey, jerking up and down. "I won't get scared."
"'T'u'd be de fust time sence she wuz bawn ef she did," audibly mused the nurse, and Hugh said: "I believe that."
The girl stared round at him and then back at his father, her eyes wide with merriment. "No Ramsey to the pilot-house with him if he can help it!" she managed to say, and fell over her mother and nurse, down into her chair and across its arm, her laughter jingling like a basket of glass rolling down-stairs. Suddenly she hearkened. The captain was speaking to her mother:
"Must you reach Loui'ville as quickly as you can?"
"Ah!—well? yes? we muz' do our possible. My 'usband he—Ramsey!"
The girl had turned face down in a play of collapse. "Nobody," she piped, "finishes what he starts to tell!"
"Ho!" playfully retorted the mother, "an' you muz' go?—cannot wait? Well, good night." But no one went.
Her mother turned again to the captain. "There is something veree bad—on the boat?" Ramsey sat up alert.
The captain's reply was heard by none but her mother and the grandfather, but evidently the twins knew whatever there was to tell. "It was no time to take deck passengers at all!" said one of them to the other, in full voice, while the grandfather was asserting:
"We are as wholly at your command, madam, as if this were Gideon Hayle's boat. Our one thought is your safety."