“You spoke pretty cross, papa; if you hadn't said 'my little daughter,' I should have cried right there—I know I should.”
“Well, you are my little daughter always, you know, no matter what happens, and that's one reason I cannot bear to have you do anything that seems the least mite bold.”
“Yes, you said something like that to the captain;” and as though she would have given all the world if he hadn't, “but I didn't mean to be bold really, only I felt so sorry for Chris;” and then she proceeded to tell, as coherently as her emotions would allow, of her unexpected encounter with her old friend, and how dreadful it would have been if they could not have seen anything of each other just because Chris was a second-cabin passenger, and of how she had mustered all her courage and gone straight to the captain to see what could be done about it.
“And he said it would be quite against the regulations, did he?” said Mr. Harris, immediately becoming interested in the situation.
“Oh, no; he said I could go to see Chris in the second cabin—he'd easily manage that—and then he said he knew I had something more on my mind, and made me tell him, and that was whether Chris could come to the first cabin sometimes, so as to look off at the bow. Do you think it was so very, very bold to ask that when he said I could not go till I told him?”
“No; that puts it in a different light, Marie-Celeste.”
“But I think—I think (for whatever her faults Marie-Celeste was fastidiously honest) the captain himself did not quite like it when I first spoke to him.”
“He got over his not-liking very quickly, then,” said her father, glad to be able to give a grain of comfort to his troubled little daughter, “but it would have been better to come to me first. It's one thing to be fearless and another thing to be—”
“I know, papa,” putting her finger to her father's lips; “please don't say that dreadful word again; I'll remember;” and Mr. Harris, knowing that she would, gave the little girl on his knee a good, hard hug, and bundled her off for a word with her mamma, comfortably tucked up in a steamer-chair on deck, and then hurried her down to the saloon for the breakfast that she stood in sore need of after such an eventful morning.