“Of course,” Staniford hastened to add, “you miss your own family circle.” To this she made no reply. It is the habit of people bred like her to remain silent for want of some sort of formulated comment upon remarks to which they assent.
Staniford fell into a musing mood, which was without visible embarrassment to the young girl, who must have been inured to much severer silences in the society of South Bradfield. He remained staring at her throughout his reverie, which in fact related to her. He was thinking what sort of an old maid she would have become if she had remained in that village. He fancied elements of hardness and sharpness in her which would have asserted themselves as the joyless years went on, like the bony structure of her face as the softness of youth left it. She was saved from that, whatever was to be her destiny in Italy. From South Bradfield to Venice,—what a prodigious transition! It seemed as if it must transfigure her. “Miss Blood,” he exclaimed, “I wish I could be with you when you first see Venice!”
“Yes?” said Lydia.
Even the interrogative comment, with the rising inflection, could not chill his enthusiasm. “It is really the greatest sight in the world.”
Lydia had apparently no comment to make on this fact. She waited tranquilly a while before she said, “My father used to talk about Italy to me when I was little. He wanted to go. My mother said afterwards—after she had come home with me to South Bradfield—that she always believed he would have lived if he had gone there. He had consumption.”
“Oh!” said Staniford softly. Then he added, with the tact of his sex, “Miss Blood, you mustn't take cold, sitting here with me. This wind is chilly. Shall I go below and get you some more wraps?”
“No, thank you,” said Lydia; “I believe I will go down, now.”
She went below to her room, and then came out into the cabin with some sewing at which she sat and stitched by the lamp. The captain was writing in his log-book; Dunham and Hicks were playing checkers together. Staniford, from a corner of a locker, looked musingly upon this curious family circle. It was not the first time that its occupations had struck him oddly. Sometimes when they were all there together, Dunham read aloud. Hicks knew tricks of legerdemain which he played cleverly. The captain told some very good stories, and led off in the laugh. Lydia always sewed and listened. She did not seem to find herself strangely placed, and her presence characterized all that was said and done with a charming innocence. As a bit of life, it was as pretty as it was quaint.
“Really,” Staniford said to Dunham, as they turned in, that night, “she has domesticated us.”
“Yes,” assented Dunham with enthusiasm; “isn't she a nice girl?”