“Cap’n’s on deck, I s’pose?” said the mate, preparing to resume negotiations where they were broken off the night before. “I hope you feel better than you did last night.”
“Yes, thank you,” said she.
“You’ll make a good sailor in time,” said the mate.
“I hope not,” said Miss Alsen, who thought it time to quell a gleam of peculiar tenderness plainly apparent in the mate’s eyes. “I shouldn’t like to be a sailor even if I were a man.”
“Why not?” inquired the other.
“I don’t know,” said the girl meditatively; “but sailors are generally such scrubby little men, aren’t they?”
“Scrubby?” repeated the mate, in a dazed voice.
“I’d sooner be a soldier,” she continued; “I like soldiers—they’re so manly. I wish there was one here now.”
“What for?” inquired the mate, in the manner of a sulky schoolboy.
“If there was a man like that here now,” said Miss Alsen thoughtfully, “I’d dare him to mustard old Towson’s nose.”