"That's what they all think at home. That's why I'm—I'm running away from them," she wailed, in a fresh access of self-commiseration.
"Running away! To Europe?"
"Where did you think this ship was bound for?"
"But—all alone?" queried the other, thunderstruck.
"All alone?" She contrived to inform her whisper with a malicious mimicry of his dismay. "I suppose the girls you know take the whole family along when they run away. Idiot!"
"Go ahead!" he encouraged her. "Take it out on me. Relieve your feelings. You can't hurt mine."
"I haven't even got a maid with me," mourned the girl. "She got left. F-f-father will have a fu-fu-fit!"
"Father was practicing for it, according to my limited powers of observation, when last seen."
"What! Where did you see him?"
"Wasn't it father who was giving the commendable imitation of a whirling dervish on the pier-head?"