He took it, breathless, eager. He seemed, then, on the point of pouring out his story to this new surprising friend. But a slight sound caught his attention. He looked up, and slowly let fall the hand that was gripped in his; for at the break of the deck, just above them, hesitating, very slim and wan, stood Miss Hui Fei.
The situation was, of course, in no way so dramatic as it seemed to the boy. He, indeed, drew back, overcome; the habit of guilty thought was not to be thrown off in a moment. Miss Carmichael, sensing that he would begin erecting the incident into a situation the moment he could clumsily speak, took the matter in hand; rising, and quietly addressing herself to the Manchu girl. Breeding, of course, was not hers, could not be; but her calm manner and her instinct for reticence could seem, as now, not unlike the finer quality.
“Do have this chair,” she said. “I was going down.”
Miss Hui Fei smiled faintly. “I coul'n' sleep,” she murmured.
“There's one little article I suppose none of us thought to bring—” thus Miss Carmichael, balancing in her light way on the balls of her feet—“needle and thread.” She even indulged in a little passing laugh. “I think my maid—” began Miss Hui Fei.
“Oh, no! I wouldn't bother you!”
“Yes! Please—I don' min'.”
She turned; and the boy started impulsively toward her. Miss Carmichael moved away, over the deck, but heard him saying, in a broken voice:
“You'll come back? I've got to tell you something!”
To which Miss Hui Fei replied, in a voice that was meant to be at once pleasant and impersonal: “Why—yes. I think I'll come back. It's so close down there.” The two young women went below. Quietly Miss Carmichael waited in the passage.