"Oh, she wrecked my pet toe with a guillotine heel because I ventured to sympathize with her."
"Oh," commented the experienced Alderson. "Sympathy isn't in much demand when one is seasick."
"It wasn't seasickness. It was weeps for the vanished fatherland; such blubbery weeps! Poor little girl!" mused the Tyro. "She isn't much bigger than a minute, and so forlorn, and so red-nosed, and so homely, you couldn't help but—"
At this moment a drunken stagger on the part of the ship slewed the speaker halfway around. He found himself looking down upon a steamer-chair, wherein lay a bundle swathed in many rugs. From that bundle protruded a veiled face and the outline of a swollen nose, above which a pair of fixed eyes blazed, dimmed but malevolent, into his.
"Er—ah—oh," said the Tyro, moving hastily away. "If you'll excuse me I think I'll just step over the rail and speak to a fish I used to know."
"What's the matter?" inquired Alderson suspiciously, following him. "Not already!"
"Oh, no. Not that. Worse. That bundle almost under our feet when I spoke—that was Little Miss Grouch."
Alderson took a furtive glance. "She's all mummied up," he suggested; "maybe she didn't hear."
"Oh, yes, she did. Trust my luck for that. And I said she was homely. And she is. Oh, Lord, I wouldn't have hurt her poor little feelings for anything."
"Don't you be too sure about her being so homely. Any woman looks a fright when she's all bunged up from crying."