"When do you expect him?"
"Every minute."
"May we stop here?"
"Certainly. Will you walk into the cuddy or on to the poop?"
"Oh, we'll keep in the open, we'll keep in the open," cried the gentleman, with the impetuosity of a man rendered irritable by the heat. "You'll have had enough of the cuddy, Miss Le Grand, long before you reach the old country."
She smiled. I liked her face then. It was a fine, glad, good-humoured smile, and humanised her wonderful eyes just as though you clothed a ghost in flesh, making the spectre natural and commonplace.
As we ascended the poop ladder, the gentleman asked me who I was, quite courteously, though his whole manner was marked by a quality of military abruptness. When he understood I was chief officer he exclaimed:
"Then Miss Le Grand permit me to introduce Mr. Tyler to you. Miss Georgina Le Grand is going home in your ship. She will be alone. We have placed her in the care of the captain."
"Perhaps," said Miss Le Grand with another of her fine smiles, "I ought to introduce you, Mr. Tyler, to my uncle, Colonel Atkinson."
Again I pulled off my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted his wide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain naïvete in the girl's way of introducing us.