“What a beautiful name! I suppose you are a schoolgirl whom he is taking home,” he said, with such waggish politeness, such inimitable drollery of tone and manner, that Nina was sorely tempted to forget her newly acquired dignity, to return to the days of her youth, and have a game of romps with this queer, delightful boy.
“He’s supposed to keep an eye on me, too,” he went on, with a shiver; “and by no means happy is this miserable little dolphin who sails in the huge, great shadow of a British whale; and I’m off for my health, too. I’m quite ill, though I don’t look it,” and his liquid eyes were raised wickedly and confidingly to her face.
“And won’t you say something against Captain Fordyce?” he went on, after a short pause; “do, just to comfort me. We’re in the same boat, you know. You are young and charming. So am I. If he keeps one down, he will the other. He told me to-day that I was not to go up on the bridge. Such impertinence! I’ll knock him down if he speaks that way to me again,—the old griffin!”
The boy was going too far. Nina gave him one sweeping, withering glance, vouchsafed him a rebuking, “Captain Fordyce is my husband. He could shake you all to pieces with one finger, you saucy little boy!” then she abruptly left him.
She would never speak to him again; and she must not put her foot on the bridge ladder till she became somewhat cooler. Her husband would want to know what had irritated her; so she paced slowly along the deck, stopping before every cabin door, and peering down every skylight she came to. The steady, subdued roar of the machinery possessed a curious charm for her. She would like to have explained to her the workings of those wonderful engines that day by day kept urging them onward.
“’Steban,” she said, precipitating herself into his presence, “I want to penetrate the innermost recesses of the ship to-morrow. You will take me, will you not?”
He sat stock-still. He was working out some problem, and not even for her would he interrupt it. She had to wait fully five minutes before he finished. Then he jumped up, and offered her the chair he had been sitting in.
“No, thank you,” she said, seizing the leg of a stool under the table, and dragging it out. “I want this. I am going to stay a little while,—that is, if you are not busy.”
“No, I am not busy,” he replied, quietly and contentedly, “I have just finished. What have you got in your arms?”
“Something to eat,” she said, briskly. “I am starving, and I want the cork taken out of this bottle, please.”