There were other passengers that petted her a great deal, or would have done so, if Fleda's very timid, retiring nature had not stood in the way. She was never bashful, nor awkward; but yet it was only a very peculiar sympathetic style of address that could get within the wall of reserve which, in general, hid her from other people. Hid what it could: for through that reserve a singular modesty, sweetness, and gracefulness of spirit would show themselves. But there was much more behind. There were no eyes, however, on board, that did not look kindly on little Fleda, excepting only two pair. The Captain showed her a great deal of flattering attention, and said she was a pattern of a passenger; even the sailors noticed and spoke of her, and let slip no occasion of showing the respect and interest she had raised. But there were two pair of eyes, and one of them Fleda thought most remarkably ugly, that were an exception to the rest; these belonged to her cousin Rossitur and Lieutenant Thorn. Rossitur had never forgiven her remarks upon his character as a gentleman, and declared preference of Mr. Carleton in that capacity; and Thorn was mortified at the invincible childish reserve which she opposed to all his advances; and both, absurd as it seems, were jealous of the young Englishman's advantage over them. Both not the less, because their sole reason for making her a person of consequence was that he had thought fit to do so. Fleda would permit neither of them to do anything for her that she could help.
They took their revenge in raillery, which was not always good-natured. Mr. Carleton never answered it in any other way than by his look of cold disdain, not always by that; little Fleda could not be quite so unmoved. Many a time her nice sense of delicacy confessed itself hurt, by the deep and abiding colour her cheeks would wear after one of their ill- mannered flings at her. She bore them with a grave dignity peculiar to herself, but the same nice delicacy forbade her to mention the subject to any one; and the young gentlemen contrived to give the little child in the course of the voyage a good deal of pain. She shunned them at last as she would the plague. As to the rest, Fleda liked her life on board ship amazingly. In her quiet way she took al the good that offered and seemed not to recognise the ill.
Mr. Carleton had bought for her a copy of The Rape of the Lock, and Bryant's poems. With these, sitting or lying among her cushions, Fleda amused herself a great deal; and it was an especial pleasure when he would sit down by her and read and talk about them. Still a greater was to watch the sea, in its changes of colour and varieties of agitation, and to get from Mr. Carleton, bit by bit, all the pieces of knowledge concerning it that he had ever made his own. Even when Fleda feared it she was fascinated; and while the fear went off the fascination grew deeper. Daintily nestling among her cushions, she watched with charmed eyes the long rollers that came up in detachments of three to attack the good ship, that like a slandered character rode patiently over them; or the crested green billows, or sometimes the little rippling waves that showed old Ocean's placidest face; while with ears as charmed as if he had been delivering a fairy tale, she listened to all Mr. Carleton could tell her of the green water where the whales feed, or the blue water where Neptune sits in his own solitude, the furthest from land, and the pavement under his feet outdoes the very canopy overhead in its deep colouring; of the transparent seas where the curious mysterious marine plants and animals may be clearly seen many feet down, and in the North where hundreds of feet of depth do not hide the bottom; of the icebergs; and whirling great fields of ice, between which, if a ship get, she had as good be an almond in a pair of strong nut-crackers. How the water grows colder and murkier as it is nearer the shore; how the mountain waves are piled together; and how old Ocean, like a wise man,. however roughened and tumbled outwardly by the currents of life, is always calm at heart. Of the signs of the weather; the out- riders of the winds, and the use the seaman makes of the tidings they bring, and before Mr. Carleton knew where he was, he found himself deep in the science of navigation, and making a star-gazer of little Fleda. Sometimes kneeling beside him as he sat on her mattress, with her hand leaning on his shoulder, Fleda asked, listened, and looked; as engaged, as rapt, as interested, as another child would be in Robinson Crusoe, gravely drinking in knowledge with a fresh healthy taste for it that never had enough. Mr. Carleton was about as amused and as interested as she. There is a second taste of knowledge that some minds get in imparting it, almost as sweet as the first relish. At any rate, Fleda never felt that she had any reason to fear tiring him; and his mother, complaining of his want of sociableness, said she believed Guy did not like to talk to any-body but that little pet of his, and one or two of the old sailors. If left to her own resources, Fleda was never at a loss; she amused herself with her books, or watching the sailors, or watching the sea, or with some fanciful manufacture she had learned from one of the ladies on board, or with what the company about her were saying and doing.
One evening she had been some time alone, looking out upon the restless little waves that were tossing and tumbling in every direction. She had been afraid of them at first, and they were still rather fearful to her imagination. This evening, as heir musing eye watched them rise and fall, her childish fancy likened them to the up-springing chances of life, uncertain, unstable, alike too much for her skill and her strength to manage. She was not more helpless before the attacks of the one than of the other. But then that calm blue heaven that hung over the sea. It was like the heaven of power and love above her destinies; only this was far higher, and more pure and abiding. "He knoweth them that trust in him." "There shall not a hair of your head perish."
Not these words, perhaps, but something like the sense of them, was in little Fleda's head. Mr. Carleton coming up, saw her gazing out upon the water, with an eye that seemed to see nothing.
"Elfie! Are you looking into futurity!"
"No, yes not exactly!" said Fleda, smiling.
"No, yes, and not exactly!" said he, throwing himself down beside her. "What does all that mean?"
"I wasn't exactly looking into futurity," said Fleda.
"What then? Don't tell me you were 'thinking;' I know that already. What?"