“You poor Gerald! Tell us all about it.”
He felt proud of himself. Nora shared the feeling, and yet her behavior lacked the warmth to be expected of a girl whose engagement to Gerald Van Steen had been a notable society event on Fifth Avenue. Wayward and shocking it was, no doubt, but she knew that she would rather talk to the rude and unregenerate Captain Michael O’Shea.
She let Gerald tell her of the great fight for more speed down among the roaring furnaces, of the fainting men, the straining boilers, the furiously driven engines, and of the bullying, cursing, jesting Johnny Kent who held the men and the machines unfalteringly to their work.
“He is an awful brute,” said Van Steen, rubbing a welt on his shoulder, “but he has pluck—no end of it. A steam-pipe leading to a pump or something burst and scalded him, but he didn’t let up at all, and threatened us with more kinds of death and damnation than ever.”
“He must be suffering dreadfully,” exclaimed the ardently sympathetic Nora. “I thought he looked so good-natured and jolly and easy-going.”
“You are a poor hand at reading character,” was the earnest comment. “Were you anxious about me, Nora?”
“Yes, I suppose so. It was so exciting on deck that I couldn’t think of anything else but that wicked Spanish cruiser.”
“Where were you all the time?”
“On the bridge with Captain O’Shea.”
“The deuce you were! I don’t like him at all, Nora. He is not the sort you should have anything to do with.”