XLIX
Whatever the number was of the second-class stateroom on the Citric, it was rather too far down in the belly of that leviathan to have suited fashionable people. But Oliver and Nancy had stopped being fashionable some time before and they told each other that it was much nicer than first-class on one of the small liners with apparent conviction and never got tired of rejoicing at their luck in its being an outside. It was true that the port-hole might most of the time have been wholly ornamental for all the good it did them, for it was generally splashed with grey October sea, but, at least, as Nancy lucently explained, you could see things—once there had actually been a porpoise—and that neither of them, in their present condition, would have worried very much about it if their cabin had been an aquarium was a fact beyond dispute.
“Time to get up, dear!” This is Oliver a little sternly from the upper berth. “That was your bath that came in a minute ago and said something in Cockney. At least I think it was—mine's voice is a good deal more like one of Peter's butlers—” “But, Ollie, I'm so comfortable!”
“So am I. But think of breakfast.”
“Well—breakfast is a point.” Then she chuckles, “Oh, Ollie, wouldn't it have been awful if we'd either of us been bad sailors!”
“We couldn't have been,” says Oliver placidly. “We have too much luck.”
“I know but—that awful woman with the face like a green pea—oh, Ollie, you'd have hated me—we are lucky, darling.”
Oliver has thought seriously enough about getting up to be dangling his legs over the edge of his shelf by now.
“Aren't we?” he says soberly. “I mean I am.”