“Nina,” he said, fondly and under his breath, “don’t be provoking. You know what I mean. Your coming in here and sitting down beside me is a proclamation of the fact that you are my wife, my bride. See how those people are staring. They are probably saying: ‘Has that charming young creature fallen a prey to that sea-wolf?’”
Regardless of the curious glances, she frowned menacingly at him. Then, unheeding his request that she would stay and sensibly take her dinner with him, she got up and stole out of the room, not in the approved-of duchess fashion, but with the air of “a conscious simpleton, a bashful sneaksby.”
In the ladies’ cabin on deck she found a pretty, golden-haired child, to whom she made friendly advances, and with whom she played until a French maid appeared to carry it, reluctant and tearful, away to bed.
Then the people came up from dinner, and before Nina could escape she was pounced upon by an elderly maiden. The celerity with which travellers by sea become acquainted with each other is only equalled by the celerity with which they forget each other; and in an incredibly short space of time Nina had listened to a long and detailed account of a list of ills that a sea-voyage was supposed to cure. Sheer exhaustion at last forced her to stop, and Nina was free.
She found a quiet corner outside, and curling herself up in a deck-chair sat staring at the sky, and listening dreamily to the confused variety of sounds about her.
After the lapse of an hour the pangs of hunger assailed her. She sprang up, and in two minutes found herself in front of the steward’s pantry. The lord high steward himself, a very grand personage, seeing who it was, condescended to wait on her.
“I want a chicken,” she said, mildly. Then, by way of explanation, “I had no dinner,—and you may give me something to drink. What is in those bottles?” and she pointed to the wall where tiers on tiers of shelves rose above each other.
“Ale and porter, ma’am. We’ve got thousands of bottles, and they’ll all be gone before we get home. That’s saying nothing of the wines that’ll be drunk. Will you have one?”
“The captain never touches a drop of these things, that is at sea,” said the man, with a comprehensive wave of his hand behind him. “From port to port he’s a strict T. T. That’s out of regard to the feelings of some of his passengers,—temperance folk.”