“Then you must believe her to be a very silly young woman, my son. I wonder you don’t tell her that passengers are expected to give their valuables to the purser, to be locked in his safe,” observed the captain jestingly. “For my part, I never should suspect that the poor girl was rolling in gold.”
“I’m sure she isn’t rich. She dresses very plainly,” said Pauline. “By the way, what makes rich people want to ‘roll,’ I wonder?”
“Especially in gold,” added Molly flippantly, as they entered the dining-saloon. “I shouldn’t want to roll in gold, of all things. It’s one of the hardest things in the world.”
“And the hardest to get,” broke in Paul, with a grin.
“What would you like to roll in, Molly? Soft money?” said Kirke, with a grin of his own. “That shows your politics, miss. You’re a soft-money girl.”
“A soft, mooney girl, Kirke Rowe? She’s no such thing. I deny it!” cried Pauline, pretending to have misunderstood. “Now bring the Alphabet Bewitched, there’s a good boy, and we’ll have a game of letters.”
With the beginning of the game, the children’s lively banter ceased, and Captain Bradstreet walked off to the further end of the saloon to converse with Mr. and Mrs. Rowe.
That was the last quiet morning on board ship for three long days; for in the night a rough gale swept over the sea, tossing the vessel to and fro, and almost hurling passengers from their berths. Once Molly was awakened by a loud crash, and cried out in terror to Pauline in the upper berth.
“It’s only dishes breaking in the dining-saloon,” yawned Pauline, turning over. “Why don’t you go to sleep?”
As her father proudly said, Pauline was a chip of the old block, a born sailor. She liked the swell of the ocean. She was never timid, never seasick. The same was true of Captain Bradstreet and of Kirke. They all went to the dining-table three times a day, sometimes five, undisturbed even though the plates might dance a jig, and the glasses in the rack above them jingle and jump and threaten to come down upon their heads.