“Mother, aren’t you afraid of him?”
“Afraid of whom?”
“Walter.”
“Still on my Walter,” she parodied, and took great amusement out of her deft sally.
“I’m afraid of him, mother. I’m dreadfully afraid he’ll go out of his mind and——”
“Tut! Tut!” Mrs. Wells interrupted. “Put that out of your head, girl. I know Walter. And I know how to bring him around. Afraid of him? Nonsense. The fact is, I have been indisposed ever since we came on board; therefore I have had to give way to Richard. When we reach ‘Red Jacket’ I shall be myself again and will take Walter in hand myself.”
“I wish you wouldn’t, mother.”
A group of men came out of the companion-way beside them. They were smoking their after-dinner cigars and talking about the narrow escape of a passenger from falling overboard.
“What’s that?” Mrs. Wells asked the man nearest her. “A man overboard?”
“They got him as he was falling,” the man replied. He had a big voice and he seemed to relish the horror of the incident. “They say a passenger was back at the stern, a man it was, and he fell afoul of a coil of rope or something and pitched over the railing.”