“You little barbarian!” exclaimed the latter, kissing her affectionately, and then pushing her back in order to look at her face. “Where have you been these ages past? I have not had a line from you for six months.”
“Ask my copper-hearted captain,” she said, as her husband, in utter mystification, stepped up behind her; “he has the cruelty to drag me all about the world with him.”
“Don’t believe her, Mrs. Eversleigh,” said Captain Fordyce, lifting his hat and shaking hands with her; “she made me give up the Merrimac because on a steamer it is not always practicable for a man to have his family with him.”
“And you have left that fine old ship,” said Captain Eversleigh, “where we—” An eloquent glance at his wife completed the sentence.
Captain Fordyce smiled. “Yes, but I have now one of the finest sailing ships afloat,—the Nina.”
“And where are you?” inquired Mrs. Eversleigh.
“At Southampton,” replied Nina; “we are just from Japan.”
Mrs. Eversleigh critically surveyed her: a sedate and quiet happiness enveloped the girl; she also looked older and slightly matronly. Yet she had not lost the mischievous gleam from her eye. The old merry, vivacious spirit was visible, subdued but still intact. “You appear foreign,” said Mrs. Eversleigh, at last.
“I ought to,” observed Nina. “I bought this dress in South America last winter, my hat is from the South Sea Islands, my jacket from Japan, and so on.”
“And do you always go with your husband?” Nina’s eyes went to him, and, seeing that he was deep in conversation with Captain Eversleigh, she said, earnestly: “Always,—I should be utterly miserable away from him, and he would be utterly miserable away from the sea. So we manage to keep together. He has everything so comfortable for me. I have a little cabin boudoir, the dearest nest of a place, with curtains of blue satin and a carpet that one’s feet sink into, and busts of all my favourite authors, and a cast of the Milo Venus behind—not a red drapery like the one in the Louvre, but a blue velvet one to match the room, and—”