“You see naught before me, sir. It might mean anything,—all or nothing.”
Billie could not help laughing. She liked this funny young Irishman with his good-natured face and his kind blue eyes that could be fierce at a moment’s notice. She rather liked the other man, too. He was very old, but his voice had a wonderfully vibrant quality in it, like that of a person in the habit of speaking in public. Perhaps he was an actor. It was always fun to guess what people were in traveling. Billie would almost rather not discover their identities in order to weave romances about them. Feargus, she imagined, was a young student, returning to Ireland to visit his people. She would have liked to linger at table a little with this agreeable pair of strangers, but she felt that it was her duty to return to her unhappy friends and minister to them, if there was anything that they would allow to be ministered. When Billie and her father had traveled together they had always made it a point to talk to everybody within talking distance at table and on deck, and Billie was not in the least embarrassed, therefore, at having been drawn into conversation with Feargus O’Connor.
As she rose to leave the dining-room she heard him say to his friend:
“Where’s Victor?”
“He was pretty low until I gave him the infallible remedy,” answered the other. “He’s all right now. I daresay he’ll be along in a few moments.”
“Oh,” cried Billie, “do you know something that’s good for seasickness?”
“You’re not ill?” he asked with a note of surprise in his voice, seeing that her cheeks were ruddy with health and that she showed no signs of precipitating herself from the place as people often did in ship’s dining-rooms.
“No, no; but my cousin and my three friends are all very ill and I don’t know what to do for them.”
“I was at one time a physician on a steamer,” said the man, “and I have cured many cases of seasickness. Do you think your friends would permit me to prescribe?”
“Have you really cured them quite quickly?” asked the young girl innocently.