Thus arrayed she was soon joining the conspirators bedecking the bower for the expected bride and groom. She was the youngest and most mischievous of the lot. She felt herself a bride again, and vowed to protect this timid little wife to come from too much hilarity at the hands of the conspirators.
CHAPTER VIII
A MIXED PICKLE
Mrs. Whitcomb had almost blushed when she had murmured to Lieutenant Hudson:
"I should think the young couple would have preferred a stateroom."
And Mr. Hudson had flinched a little as he explained:
"Yes, of course. We tried to get it, but it was gone."
It was during the excitement over the decoration of the bridal section, that the stateroom-tenants slipped in unobserved.
First came a fluttering woman whose youthful beauty had a certain hue of experience, saddening and wisering. The porter brought her in from the station-platform, led her to the stateroom's concave door and passed in with her luggage. But she lingered without, a Peri at the gate of Paradise. When the porter returned to bow her in, she shivered and hesitated, and then demanded:
"Oh, Porter, are you sure there's nobody else in there?"