“It’s what they call half a gale, I believe. I don’t know how they measure it.”
She smiled warily in response to his laugh, and said to her father, “Are you going up after breakfast, poppa?”
“Why, if you want to go, Ellen—”
“Oh, I wasn’t asking for that; I am going back to Lottie. But I should think you would like the air. Won’t it do you good?”
“I’m all right,” said the judge, cheered by her show of concern for some one else. “I suppose it’s rather wet on deck?” he referred himself to Breckon.
“Well, not very, if you keep to the leeward. She doesn’t seem a very wet boat.”
“What is a wet boat” Ellen asked, without lifting her sad eyes.
“Well, really, I’m afraid it’s largely a superstition. Passengers like to believe that some boats are less liable to ship seas—to run into waves—than others; but I fancy that’s to give themselves the air of old travellers.”
She let the matter lapse so entirely that he supposed she had forgotten it in all its bearings, when she asked, “Have you been across many times?”
“Not many-four or five.”