“So I do, sweetheart,” he said, soothingly; “but I don’t want to have people goggling at you. You are sensitive and nervous from yesterday, and your lack of sleep last night. You could not stand observation. Come back and show me what you have in the way of clothes. Your esteemed mother may know more about books than I do, but I bet you she doesn’t know so much about the fashions.”
With a proud and dignified air the girl led the way to her room. “There,” she said, throwing back her trunk lid, “you may see all I have. They’re mostly things you sent me, anyway.”
He rapidly tossed over every article of clothing submitted to him. “All very well for a maiden lady, not quite enough for a married one.”
“Will you stop?” she said, warningly. “I am not married.”
“Certainly, darling. Here—what’s the matter with this? This is what I call a blue silk blouse with a dash of gold for trimming. Natty, slightly nautical, and in good taste. Take off your red flannel jacket, and I will help you on with it.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” she said, opening the door. “Go out into the hall.”
He stuffed his handkerchief in his mouth so that she would not hear him laughing, and, having attained to sobriety when she issued from the room a few minutes later, went soberly down the hall by the side of his disturbed young princess.
She thawed when they reached the big dining-room. “Shy, with all her bravado,” he muttered, watching her as she crept along in his wake. “Treats me like a dog when we are alone, and like a lord before strangers. It would pay to keep her in a crowd.”
She took but little breakfast, and once or twice volunteered remarks to him in a gentle and touchingly confidential tone. Her lips quivered several times, and his face darkened at the sight; for he knew she was thinking of her home and her uncertain parentage.
“Confusion to the brute that forced me to snatch her from that quiet place,” he reflected, with inward anger. “I wish I could see him squirm;” and his gaze went to those windows of the dining-room nearest the shores of distant England. Then he addressed Nina under his breath: “Darling, will you do some shopping with me before we go on board the Merrimac?”