she murmured. "Well, that means that I'm not the only one. Wordsworth evidently got worried about things like I do. But it's the cruelty—that's what I can't understand."
There was a little comfort in that thought as she fell asleep: it gave her a sense of comradeliness that anyone so eminently sane as Wordsworth should have had "blank misgivings."
CHAPTER VIII
Blue and silver had turned to blue and gold next morning; the light no longer seemed to come from the sea in bright glitters; it was transfused through the air as liquid gold, very mellow and soothing and softened. It was five o'clock when she wakened. Through the open port she could see the sea swelling gently, breaking into a little hesitating ripple of foam here and there. She climbed very carefully down from her bunk; Jimmy was still sleeping soundly. There was no one about save a few deck hands scrubbing up above; they were out of sight of land now, and she gave a deep sigh of exhilaration as she turned on the sea-water spigot of the bath and, opening the port wide, felt the keen morning breezes blowing in upon her. Coming out ten minutes later, pink-cheeked and damp-haired, she met Louis in pyjamas, hurrying along with a towel over his arm.
"Were you ill yesterday?" she said, standing in front of him. "I could hear your bunk creaking lots of times in the night, and once or twice you gave the partition an almighty crack."
"Oh, I'm all right," he said, dashing past without looking at her.
"I suppose," she called softly, with mischief in her eyes, "that you are intentionally making for the women's bathroom? Someone might want to use it and be horrified to see you emerging—"
"Laughing at me again, aren't you?" he cried savagely, turning with a scowl and standing undecided.
She hurried below to give him a chance to retire gracefully.