"Which way?"
"You and George Alcott have such a snappish thread in you!" said Mr.
Motley yawning—"only it sits better on George than it does on you. But
I like it—it rather excites me to be snubbed. However, here comes
Linden—so I hope they'll not follow him this way."
"This way" Mr. Linden himself did not come, but chose another part of the deck for a somewhat prolonged walk in the seabreeze. The doctor glanced towards him, then moved his chair slightly, so as to put the walker out of his range of vision.
"He's a good fellow enough," he remarked carelessly. "You were pleased to speak of him just now as 'incomprehensible'—may I ask how he has earned a title to that?" The tone was a little slighting.
"Take the last instance—" said Mr. Motley,—"you yourself were pleased to pronounce the steerage a more insufferable bore than the deck—yet he chooses it,—and not only on Sundays. I don't believe there's a day that he don't go down there. He's popular enough without it—'tisn't that. And nobody knows it—one of the sailors told me. If he was a medico, like you, doctor, there'd be less wonder—but as it is!—" and Mr. Motley resigned himself again to the influence of the sunshine. A moment's meditation on the doctor's part, to judge by his face, was delectable.
"There isn't any sickness down there?" he said then.
"Always is in the steerage—isn't there?" said Mr. Motley,—"I don't know!—the surgeon can tell you."
"There's no occasion,—" said the doctor with a little haughtiness. "He knows who I am."
And Dr. Harrison too resigned himself, apparently, to the sunny influences of the time and was silent.
But as the sun went down lower and lower, Mr. Motley roused himself up and went off to try the effect upon his spirits of a little cheerful society,—then Mr. Linden came and took the vacant chair.