"I really believe," said Irma, "that Aunt Caroline thinks I will catch something from these negatives of the steerage. She is so nervous about it."
"Then I should think she would be unwilling to have Marion spend so much time there."
"Marion! oh, she doesn't care to have him down there. I remember what she said when he asked her one day."
"Well, he goes just the same. I heard my mother and Mademoiselle talking about it only yesterday."
This so surprised Irma that she closed her camera and took no more pictures.
"I wonder," she said, as if to change the subject, "why that old woman sits there in the corner with her hands over her face. Those little girls, I think, must be her grandchildren. Generally she has the baby in her arms, but the two older girls seem to be taking care of it to-day, and the oldest isn't here at all. She's about my age. Why, there she is, sitting by herself, and her eyes are very red, as if she had been crying."
Later in the day, after Muriel had left her, Irma sat down on a settee at the uncovered end of the deck where a number of people, old and young, were playing shuffleboard. Just then the ship's doctor passed, and she thought it a good time to ask him about the old woman in the steerage.
"The old woman is downhearted. Her daughter, the mother of the four girls, died a couple of days ago. She was longing to live until she reached Italy, was sure, in fact, that once there she would recover. But from the first I knew her case was hopeless, and we buried her at sea the night before we touched at Gibraltar."
"Oh," sighed Irma, "it must be hard for the children."