As he went to the room reserved for Grimshaw, he met Ruth just coming out of it. Her skirts brushed against him in the narrow corridor and he tingled to the finger tips.
"I've just put a few flowers in Mr. Grimshaw's room," she said. "They seem to make the bare little cubby holes a bit more homey, don't you think? I thought they would be a sort of welcome."
Drew agreed with her, but the hope he had been hugging to his breast that he had been singled out for special attention vanished.
"I was foolish enough to think that I had them all," he confessed with a sheepish grin.
"What a greedy man!" she laughed. "No, indeed! Did you think I was going to overlook my father or Mr. Parmalee? You men are so conceited!"
As though the mention of his name had summoned him, the door of a neighboring stateroom opened just then and a young man stepped out. He smiled pleasantly as his gaze fell on Ruth.
"Good morning, Miss Ruth. I'm incorrigibly lazy, I'm afraid," he remarked, "or else this good air is responsible for my sleeping more soundly than for a long time past."
Ruth assured him that it was still early.
"If you are lazy, the sun is too," she said, "for, like yourself, it has just risen."
"That makes him lazier," returned Parmalee, "for he went to rest a good deal earlier than I did last night."