"The boat."
"Who pays the boat?" she asked, and suddenly, blushing, saw her situation. Except the bishop and the judge's sister, who were conversing in undertone—except them and Hugh—the whole company, actually with here and there an elbow on the board, had turned to her in such bright expectancy as to give her a shock of encounter. But mirth upheld her, and leaning in over the table she shifted her question to the smiling bishop: "Who pays the boat?"
"The boat? Why—ha, ha!—that's the boat's lookout."
"It isn't," she laughed, but laughed so daintily and in a gayety so modestly self-justified that the group approved and the Vicksburg man asked her:
"Who ought to pay the boat?"
"We!" she cried. "All of us! It's in the Bible that we ought!" She looked again to the bishop. "Ain't it?"
"Why, I don't recall any mention of this matter there."
"Nor of strangers?" she asked, "nor of sick folks?" and her demure mirth, not flung at him or at any one, but quite to itself and for itself, came again.
"Ah, that's another affair!" he rejoined. He felt her and Hugh, with half the rest, saying to themselves, "It is not!" but was all the more moved to continue: "My fair daughter, you prepare the way of the Lord. Brethren and sisters, I want you to gather with me here as soon as those yonder are through"—a backhanded toss indicated the children's table, whose feasters showed no sign that they would ever be through at all. "We must—every believer—and whosoever will—on this passenger-deck—spend an hour—more if the spirit leads—in prayer for this pestilence to be stayed." He fastened his gaze on Hugh; no senator was present to overtop him now, and certainly this colt of John Courteney's should not. Yet the largeness with which the colt's eyes stared through and beyond him was significant to all.
"And we must do more!" he persisted.