"What for? Why did you want to open my mouth?"
"To give you a drink—you needed a stimulant."
"Oh!"
By this time a few dexterous twists and turns had restrained those wandering tresses within bounds. She held a hair-pin between her lips, and a woman can always say exactly what she means when a hairpin prevents discursiveness.
"I am all right now," she announced. "Will you please leave me, and tell the steward to bring me a cup of tea? If there is a cabin at liberty, he might put that portmanteau in it which I brought on board at Liverpool."
Hozier fulfilled her requests, and rejoined Coke on the bridge.
"Miss Yorke is quite well again, sir," he reported. "She wants a cabin—to change her clothes, I imagine. That bag you saw——"
"Pretty foxy, wasn't it?" broke in Coke, with a glee that was puzzling to his hearer.
"The whole affair seems to have been carefully planned," agreed Philip. "But, as I was saying, she asked for the use of a cabin, so I told the steward to give her mine until we put into Queenstown."
Coke, who had lighted another black and stumpy cigar, removed it in order to speak with due emphasis.