“I shall never forget you, never; and, maybe, if I am ever married, you shall live with me, and be my grandma,” Gertie said, with a dim perception that her friend’s heart was sore with a longing to go with her daughter, who did not want her; and then Mrs. Barrett sobbed aloud, and held the girl close to her bosom, and said:
“I never thought I could love a child as I love you, little Gertie. I am a hard, wicked woman, no doubt, but I want you to be good, and surely I may pray for that. God bless you, Gertie, and make your life as happy as you are sweet and pure. Good-by.”
She put the child gently from her, and went quickly into her own room, where she could be alone, and I am almost certain that the parting with her daughter did not hurt her half as much as the parting with Gertie Westbrooke.
CHAPTER XX.
ON THE SEA.
They had been at sea three days, and Edith in her warm wraps and pretty hood was sitting on deck in the large easy-chair her husband had bought in Liverpool for this purpose. Every comfort which ingenuity could devise and money pay for he had procured for her in order to make the voyage bearable. One of the largest, most commodious staterooms was hers, so that she need not feel too much confined, and when all this did not avail to avert the evils of sea-sickness, he and Norah nursed her assiduously, until she was able to be lifted in his arms and carried upon deck, where, with the fresh breeze blowing in her face, she felt her strength coming back, and thoroughly enjoyed the blue expanse of sky above, and the deep, dark waters beneath, which now were smooth and quiet as a river. The colonel was never sick, and walked the planks from first to last as firmly and steadily as a general at the head of his troops; but alas for poor Godfrey. During the voyage out he had been perfectly well, even in a storm, and boasted much of his ability to keep so.
“You have only to exercise your will and you are well enough,” he said, with a certain sniff of contempt for the weaker ones who are never seen from port to port. “Pluck is all you need to keep you straight, even when chairs and tables and shovel and tongs are dancing a cotillon, and raising Ned generally.”
This was Godfrey’s opinion, when in his clean, light summer suit he stepped airily on board and gave his hand to Bob Macpherson, even then growing pale about the lips and unsteady in his feet. But when they had been out a few hours, and a great lurch came, and the waves broke over the deck, and splashed Godfrey’s clean pants, and dashed the salt spray in his face, he, too, began to turn white, and feel, as he expressed it, as if the ends of his toes were coming up through his stomach to pay his throat a visit, and when the toes reached there and showed signs of going still further, the young man succumbed to his fate, and suddenly disappearing from view, went headlong into the room where poor Bob had lain from the first, caring little whether his perfumed hair was parted in the middle or not, or his elaborate night-shirt buttoned before or behind. Personal appearance was nothing in that stateroom where the two young men lay, one in the upper, one in the under berth, and both too sick for more exertion than to groan, when a swell, heavier than usual, sent them rolling on the floor. Regularly each morning Dan went in to see how it fared with them, offering chicken-broth and coffee, and bidding them “keep up their courage and have a little pluck; it was nothing to what it would be.”
To these consolatory remarks Bob offered no response. He was too nearly crushed to speak, and afraid, withal, to do so, as the least movement raised a tornado in his stomach; but Godfrey was more demonstrative, and having plunged into bed in his boots, which he had succeeded in getting off and had beside him, he hurled one at the head of poor Dan, who adroitly dodged it and then graciously adjusted the spittoon, knowing it would be needed after such exertion. And it was!
“Talk to me of pluck!” Godfrey said, between the upheavings which nearly burst his throat; “I believe my soul I’m throwing mine up!” and then he lay back upon his pillow, white, quivering and subdued, and took a swallow of the broth and declared it was made of dishwater, and bade Dan clear out and never show himself there again.