She paused in the doorway, and Nina gave a quick sigh of appreciation. This saloon was infinitely more homelike than the huge hotel dining-room. The windows were all open to the evening air. Cheerful sunbeams streamed through them, lighted up the crimson-covered furniture, the snowy tables, and rejoiced the hearts of a number of yellow-throated canaries, who poured forth a continuous warble from cages half hidden in a bank of green ferns.
At the head of the table nearest the doorway sat a man in a black and gold uniform. The stewardess pointed to him. “Your seat is there, miss, next the capting.”
At the sound of her voice Captain Fordyce turned, and, seeing his young wife, rose and extended a hand. “Ah! here you are. I was afraid you had succumbed to seasickness.” Then twirling around a chair next his own, he said: “This is your place.”
His manner was conventional, and overcome by it and the uniform, that was quite a new thing to her, Nina subsided into her seat with a pretty blushing stare; then, dropping her eyes, looked at the dainty buttonhole bouquet in the centre of her elaborately folded napkin. The rosebud and sprig of heliotrope seemed like old friends blown her from the garden at home, and, gently putting them to her face, she looked around to see what the other ladies were doing with theirs. They were fastening them in their dresses. She imitated them, then taking up the menu beside her plate she read in bewilderment its comprehensive contents.
The tall steward standing behind her chair breathed a soft little sigh; thus admonished of her duty, she hastily found the soups, and, running her eye over the different kinds, said, “Tomato.”
In a trice he reappeared with it. As she picked up her spoon Captain Fordyce said, inquiringly:
“So you are not going to be ill?”
“I have been ill, dreadfully ill,” said the girl, innocently, “but I have got quite over it now.”
“And we are just three hours out of port,” he remarked, in a quiet, amused fashion. “Allow me to congratulate you on the celerity with which you have vanquished the foe to enjoyment of life at sea. I hope my other passengers may be equally fortunate.”
Not feeling inclined for conversation, Nina let this remark pass. Captain Fordyce looked away from her down the crowded tables, then said to a lady on his left hand, “You asked about the weather, Mrs. Grayley. I prophesy that there won’t be a score of people at these tables to-morrow.”