Chapter Fourteen.
Miss Pritty’s “Worst Fears” are more than realised.
Turn we now to Miss Pritty—and a pretty sight she is when we turn to her! In her normal condition Miss Pritty is the pink of propriety and neatness. At the present moment she lies with her mouth open, and her eyes shut, hair dishevelled, garments disordered, slippers off, and stockings not properly on. Need we say that the sea is at the bottom of it? One of the most modest, gentle, unassuming, amiable of women has been brought to the condition of calmly and deliberately asserting that she “doesn’t care!”—doesn’t care for appearances; doesn’t care for character; doesn’t care for past reminiscences or future prospects; doesn’t care, in short, for anything—life and death included. It is a sad state of mind and body—happily a transient!
“Stewardess.”
“Yes, Miss?”
“I shall die.”
“Oh no, Miss, don’t say so. You’ll be quite well in a short time,” (the stewardess has a pleasant motherly way of encouraging the faint-hearted). “Don’t give way to it, Miss. You’ve no idea what a happytite you’ll ’ave in a few days. You’ll be soon able to eat hoceans of soup and ’eaps of fat pork, and—”
She stops abruptly, for Miss Pritty has gone into sudden convulsions, in the midst of which she begs the stewardess, quite fiercely, to “Go away.”