"There's only two of us—including me—that haven't crocked up," he said; "people don't seem to think it's hot for us, or that we feel fed up at all. That Mrs. Hetherington seems to think I'm a private sort of lady's maid to her alone. All these women do—sitting about in deck chairs calling 'Steward' all day long! In the third class alone there's six stewards in hospital! And only yesterday I caught it from the Chief because the cutlery hadn't been polished—not that that's my job at all, really—"
The next moment Knollys fell over in a dead faint, and copying what she had seen him do when passengers fainted, Marcella fetched a pillow from her cabin, laid it under his back on the floor and left him while she polished the cutlery. Louis found her there and they came near to fighting about it.
"What on earth are you doing?" he asked in amazement.
"Poor Knollys has gone down," she said, thinking that adequate explanation.
Louis looked at him casually. Marcella was coming to understand that he looked upon illness with a certain hardness and lack of pity that surprised her; he was immensely interested in it, he liked to dabble in it, but not from a passion of healing nearly so much as from curiosity and technical interest. To him, in illness, curing the patient mattered infinitely less than beating the disease. He had a queer snobbishness about illness, too, that amazed her. To him Knollys, a steward, ill meant infinitely less than the illness of a member of his own class would have meant. This struck Marcella as illogical. To her it seemed that, in illness at least, all men were brothers.
"There's a stoker just died of heat apoplexy: there'll be a funeral presently," he said coolly. "What on earth are you doing?"
"People are so unkind. Knollys got into trouble yesterday because these silly things were not clean," she said, polishing away furiously.
"But you can't do the work of a servant," he said, aghast.
"I can. Of course I can. I often have. I've worked in the fields with the men, and I've milked the cows and made the butter. Oh, lots of things—"
"Oh well, I suppose a farmer's daughter can do those things, Marcella. But, look here, old girl, when we're married you'll have to be on your dignity a bit."