The young man stepped to the looking-glass. Both eyes were blacked, his lip had been cut, and there was a purple weal well up on his left cheek. He stopped himself from grinning only just in time to save another twinge of pain.
"Some party while it lasted. I never saw more willing mixers. Everybody seemed anxious to sit in except Mr. Wally Selfridge," he explained to his reflection. "But Macdonald is the class. He's there with both right and left. That uppercut of his is vicious. Don't ever get in the way of it, Gordon Elliot." He examined his injuries more closely in the glass. "Some one landed a peach on my right lamp and the other is in mourning out of sympathy. Oh, well, I ain't the only prize beauty on board this morning." The young man forgot and smiled. "Ouch! Don't do that, Gordon. Yes, son. 'There's many a black, black eye, they say, but none so bright as mine.' Now isn't that the truth?"
He bathed, dressed, and went out on the deck.
Early though he was, one passenger at least was up before him. The young woman he had noticed last evening with the magazine was doing a constitutional. A slight breeze was stirring, and as she moved against it the white skirt clung first to one knee and then the other, moulding itself to the long lines of her limbs with exquisite grace of motion. It was as though her walk were the expression of a gallant and buoyant personality.
Irish he guessed her when the deep-blue eyes rested on his for an instant as she passed, and fortified his conjecture by the coloring of the clear-skinned face and the marks of the Celtic race delicately stamped upon it.
The purser came out of his room and joined Elliot. He smiled at sight of the young man's face.
"Your map's a little out of plumb this morning, sir," he ventured.
"But you ought to see the other fellow," came back Gordon boyishly.
"I've seen him—several of him. We've got the best collection of bruises on board I ever clapped eyes on. I've got to give it to you and Mr. Macdonald. You know how to hit."
"Oh, I'm not in his class."