"Read it," he said, watching her anxiously. "Granny read it to me when she put it there."
"Call upon me in the time of trouble," she read. He nodded.
"That's right. Now put it back. Gran said I must never lose it, and some day if I remembered it, it might come in handy."
She tucked it safely away and he started to climb into bed.
"Jimmy, I always get washed before bed, don't you?" she suggested.
"Oh yes. I promised Gran. But it's hard to remember everything," he said resignedly. But his washing was not very comprehensive; Marcella promised herself a busy half-hour with him in the bathroom next morning.
He was asleep in two minutes, but Marcella did not attempt to undress for a long time. She dragged the cabin trunk out from under the bunk very quietly, and, sitting down on it, frowned. A queer thing had happened to her. Over all her early life her father had towered like a Colossus. The rest of the world had been filled with friends—friendly visions, friendly people, friendly ghosts. She had not met anyone unkind before. Conditions had never been anything but unkind; she expected cold and hunger, hardness and discomfort. But that people could be unkind to each other she had never realized. Then had come Louis's tale, which had horrified her, Diddy's tale which had grieved her at first and then puzzled her as she saw how easily the image of the sick girl was replaced by that of a man who gave her meringues. Ole Fred had frightened her: Mr. Peters had at first seemed ridiculous and then cruel. Most of the people on the ship seemed cruel, when she came to reflect about it. Something cruel had happened that very morning. She had noticed, when they came aboard at Tilbury, a very romantic figure standing on deck; he fitted in much better with her conceptions of travel in far lands than did the very respectable, commonplace fathers of families she saw scattered about the deck. He was a man in knee breeches, leather leggings, a bright blue shirt and a claret and buff blazer. He wore a wide-brimmed brown hat and a fierce expression. From his leather belt hung a huge clasp knife and two small pistols. She thought him very funny, but very much like herself when she had dressed up as King Arthur. She sympathized entirely with his dressing a part. Later she heard shouts of cruel laughter as he explained valiantly that he had never in his life been from his native village in the Welsh hills—that Australia was a new country that needed to be "opened up." He quoted Manville Fenn and other writers of boys' adventure stories thirty or forty years old to show the dangers of Australia and his own indomitable courage in tackling them: he told of Captain Cook's heart and many other blood-curdling tales, and was greeted with ironical cheers and laughter. They explained to him at great length all about the civilization of Australia, and when, an hour after the Devon coast had dropped below the horizon he became miserably sea-sick, they formed a procession before him, carrying fire buckets, brandy and beer to his assistance.
Marcella was muddled. She frowned and got no nearer a solution to her puzzles, until she remembered that, right at the top of her trunk, put in at the last moment, was a Golden Treasury her mother gave her years ago.
She turned the pages to the end, looking for something she remembered that seemed to fit in with her mood. In the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality she read it—
"Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,"