"'Ush! Naughty! Signor will overhear you, Mees Smith. Then I give you spanks."
"Well, he shouldn't wear such a bad hat, Mademoiselle."
I was just turning round to introduce myself, when I saw that they had both stepped on to the steamer. I followed them. The French Governess seemed to be in doubt about the boat.
"Antelope of the western horizon," she said, to a surly onlooker, "I will give you three piastres and a French halfpenny if you have ze goodness to tell me if this is ze Ryde steamer."
"How the dickens am I to know whether it's the right steamer or not, when I don't know where you're going to?" asked the man.
I knocked him down at once, and as he rose to return the compliment my hat fell off. Miss Smith caught it on the tip of her toe as it was falling, sent it twenty feet into the air, caught it again in her large beautiful hands, and pressed it firmly down over my eyes.
In the wilds of Assam one gets unused to the grand freedom and cultured geniality of English ladies. I hardly knew what to do, but I extricated myself slowly from the folds of the hat, chucked her under the chin, and remarked, "Houp-là!" The French Governess had retired to the cabin to be ill, and we were rapidly steaming from the quay.
"Don't!" said Miss Smith, looking very shy and pretty.
"Certainly not," I replied. "Of course you will have some tea with me?"
"Oh, my!" she murmured, in her sweet, refined voice. "Well, I must first go and look after poor Mlle. Donnerwetter."