“Not for ourselves do we need them, Mr. Patrick,” she said teasingly, “but for our troublesome guests from the old country.” Then hastily, to avoid the wordy warfare that he was eager to plunge into, she went on. “Up there is an island that is all fort.”
“Shades of my uncle the general!” he said; “can that be so? Let us go forward and see it.”
“A French vice-admiral who ran himself through with his sword is buried on it,” said Vivienne, as they proceeded slowly along the deck.
“Hush!” said the boy. “What is mamma doing?”
Vivienne smiled broadly. Mrs. Macartney, the good-hearted, badly educated daughter of a rich but vulgar Dublin merchant, was a constant source of amusement to her. Just now she was waddling down the deck, driving before her a little dapper Nova Scotian gentleman who had become known to them on the passage as excessively polite, excessively shy, and, like Vivienne, excessively patriotic.
Hovering over her victim like a great good-natured bird she separated him from a group of people standing near, and motioned him into the shadow of a suspended lifeboat.
“Ducky, ducky, come and be killed,” said Patrick wickedly. “Do you know what mamma is going to do, Miss Delavigne?”
“No, I do not.”
“She is going to cross-question that man about Canada in such a ladylike, inane way that he won’t know whether he’s on his head or his heels. Come and listen.”
“Mrs. Macartney may not like it.”