第 6 页

"I thought," murmured the young lady, from behind her handkerchief, "that we might at least be friends. I didn't think you could ever act so harshly towards me as you have done for the past few days."

"Act?" cried the young man. "Bless me, I haven't acted one way or the other. I simply haven't had the pleasure of meeting you till the other evening, or morning, which ever it was. I have said nothing, and done nothing. I don't see how I could be accused of acting, or of anything else."

"I think," sobbed the young lady, "that you might at least have spoken kindly to me."

"Good gracious!" cried Morris, starting up, "here comes Miss Earle. For heaven's sake put up that handkerchief."

But Blanche merely sank her face lower in it, while silent sobs shook her somewhat slender form.

Miss Earle stood for a moment amazed as she looked at Morris's flushed face, and at the bowed head of the young lady beside him; then, without a word, she turned and walked away.

"I wish to goodness," said Morris, harshly, "that if you are going to have a fit of crying you would not have it on deck, and where people can see you."

The young woman at once straightened up and flashed a look at him in which there were no traces of her former emotion.

"People!" she said, scornfully. "Much you care about people. It is because Miss Katherine Earle saw me that you are annoyed. You are afraid that it will interfere with your flirtation with her."

"Flirtation?"

"Yes, flirtation. Surely it can't be anything more serious?"

"Why should it not be something more serious?" asked Morris, very coldly. The blue eyes opened wide in apparent astonishment.

"Would you marry her?" she said, with telling emphasis upon the word.

"Why not?" he answered. "Any man might be proud to marry a lady like Miss Earle."

"A lady! Much of a lady she is! Why, she is one of your own shop-girls. You know it."

"Shop-girls?" cried Morris, in astonishment.

"Yes, shop-girls. You don't mean to say that she has concealed that fact from you, or that you didn't know it by seeing her in the store?"

"A shop-girl in my store?" he murmured, bewildered. "I knew I had seen her somewhere."

Blanche laughed a little irritating laugh.

"What a splendid item it would make for the society papers," she said. "The junior partner marries one of his own shop-girls, or, worse still, the junior partner and one of his shop-girls leave New York on the City of Buffalo, and are married in England. I hope that the reporters will not get the particulars of the affair." Then, rising, she left the amazed young man to his thoughts.

George Morris saw nothing more of Miss Katherine Earle that day.

"I wonder what that vixen has said to her," he thought, as he turned in for the night.

Fifth Day

IN THE EARLY morning of the fifth day out, George Morris paced the deck alone.

"Shop-girl or not," he had said to himself, "Miss Katherine Earle is much more of a lady than the other ever was." But as he paced the deck, and as Miss Earle did not appear, he began to wonder more and more what had been said to her in the long talk of yesterday forenoon. Meanwhile Miss Earle sat in her own state-room thinking over the same subject. Blanche had sweetly asked her for permission to sit down beside her.

"I know no ladies on board," she said, "and I think I have met you before."

"Yes," answered Miss Earle, "I think we have met before."

"How good of you to have remembered me," said Blanche, kindly.

"I think," replied Miss Earle, "that it is more remarkable that you should remember me than that I should remember you. Ladies very rarely notice the shop-girls who wait upon them."

"You seemed so superior to your station," said Blanche, "that I could not help remembering you, and could not help thinking what a pity it was you had to be there."

"I do not think that there is anything either superior or inferior about the station. It is quite as honourable, or dishonourable, which ever it may be, as any other branch of business. I cannot see, for instance, why my station, selling ribbons at retail, should be any more dishonourable than the station of the head of the firm, who merely does on a very large scale what I was trying to do for him on a very limited scale."

"Still," said Blanche, with a yawn, "people do not all look upon it in exactly that light."

"Hardly any two persons look on any one thing in the same light. I hope you have enjoyed your voyage so far?"

"I have not enjoyed it very much," replied the young lady with a sigh.

"I am sorry to hear that. I presume your father has been ill most of the way?"

"My father?" cried the other, looking at her questioner.

"Yes, I did not see him at the table since the first day."

"Oh, he has had to keep his room almost since we left. He is a very poor sailor."

"Then that must make your voyage rather unpleasant?"

The blonde young lady made no reply, but, taking up the book which Miss Earle was reading, said, "You don't find Mr. Morris much of a reader, I presume? He used not to be."

"I know very little about Mr. Morris," said Miss Earle, freezingly.

"Why, you knew him before you came on board, did you not?" questioned the other, raising her eyebrows.

"No, I did not."

"You certainly know he is junior partner in the establishment where you work?"

"I know that, yes, but I had never spoken to him before I met him on board this steamer."

"Is that possible? Might I ask you if there is any probability of your becoming interested in Mr. Morris?"

"Interested! What do you mean?"

"Oh, you know well enough what I mean. We girls do not need to be humbugs with each other, whatever we may be before the men. When a young woman meets a young man in the early morning, and has coffee with him, and when she reads to him, and tries to cultivate his literary tastes, whatever they may be, she certainly shows some interest in the young man, don't you think so?"

Miss Earle looked for a moment indignantly at her questioner. "I do not recognise your right," she said, "to ask me such a question."

"No? Then let me tell you that I have every right to ask it. I assure you that I have thought over the matter deeply before I spoke. It seemed to me there was one chance in a thousand—only one chance in a thousand, remember—that you were acting honestly, and on that one chance I took the liberty of speaking to you. The right I have to ask such a question is this—Mr. George Morris has been engaged to me for several years."

"Engaged to you?"

"Yes. If you don't believe it, ask him."

"It is the very last question in the world I would ask anybody."

"Well, then, you will have to take my word for it. I hope you are not very shocked, Miss Earle, to hear what I have had to tell you."

"Shocked? Oh dear, no. Why should I be? It is really a matter of no interest to me, I assure you."

"Well, I am very glad to hear you say so. I did not know but you might have become more interested in Mr. Morris than you would care to own. I think myself that he is quite a fascinating young gentleman; but I thought it only just to you that you should know exactly how matters stood."

"I am sure I am very much obliged to you."

This much of the conversation Miss Earle had thought over in her own room that morning. "Did it make a difference to her or not?" that was the question she was asking herself. The information had certainly affected her opinion of Mr. Morris, and she smiled to herself rather bitterly as she thought of his claiming to be so exceedingly truthful. Miss Earle did not, however, go up on deck until the breakfast gong had rung.

"Good morning," said Morris, as he took his place at the little table. "I was like the boy on the burning deck this morning, when all but he had fled. I was very much disappointed that you did not come up, and have your usual cup of coffee."

"I am sorry to hear that," said Miss Earle; "if I had known I was disappointing anybody I should have been here."

"Miss Katherine," he said, "you are a humbug. You knew very well that I would be disappointed if you did not come."

The young lady looked up at him, and for a moment she thought of telling him that her name was Miss Earle, but for some reason she did not do so.

"I want you to promise now," he continued, "that to-morrow morning you will be on deck as usual."

"Has it become a usual thing, then?"

"Well, that's what I am trying to make it," he answered. "Will you promise?"

"Yes, I promise."

"Very well, then, I look on that as settled. Now, about to-day. What are you going to do with yourself after breakfast?"

"Oh, the usual thing, I suppose. I shall sit in my steamer chair and read an interesting book."

"And what is the interesting book for to-day?"

"It is a little volume by Henry James, entitled The Siege of London."

"Why, I never knew that London had been besieged. When did that happen?"

"Well, I haven't got very far in the book yet, but it seems to have happened quite recently, within a year or two, I think. It is one of the latest of Mr. James's short stories. I have not read it yet."

"Ah, then the siege is not historical?"

"Not historical further than Mr. James is the historian."

"Now, Miss Earle, are you good at reading out loud?"

"No, I am not."

"Why, how decisively you say that. I couldn't answer like that, because I don't know whether I am or not. I have never tried any of it. But if you will allow me, I will read that book out to you. I should like to have the good points indicated to me, and also the defects."

"There are not likely to be many defects," said the young lady. "Mr. James is a very correct writer. But I do not care either to read aloud or have a book read to me. Besides, we disturb the conversation or the reading of any one else who happens to sit near us. I prefer to enjoy a book by reading it myself."

"Ah, I see you are resolved cruelly to shut me out of all participation in your enjoyment."

"Oh, not at all. I shall be very happy to discuss the book with you afterwards. You should read it for yourself. Then, when you have done so, we might have a talk on its merits or demerits, if you think, after you have read it, that it has any."

"Any what? merits or demerits?"

"Well, any either."

"No; I will tell you a better plan than that. I am not going to waste my time reading it."

"Waste, indeed!"

"Certainly waste. Not when I have a much better plan of finding out what is in the book. I am going to get you to tell me the story after you have read it."

"Oh, indeed, and suppose I refuse?"

"Will you?"

"Well, I don't know. I only said suppose."

"Then I shall spend the rest of the voyage trying to persuade you."

"I am not very easily persuaded, Mr. Morris."

"I believe that," said the young man. "I presume I may sit beside you while you are reading your book?"

"You certainly may, if you wish to. The deck is not mine, only that portion of it, I suppose, which I occupy with the steamer chair. I have no authority over any of the rest."

"Now, is that a refusal or an acceptance?"

"It is which ever you choose to think."

"Well, if it is a refusal, it is probably softening down the No, but if it is an acceptance it is rather an ungracious one, it seems to me."

"Well, then, I shall be frank with you. I am very much interested in this book. I should a great deal rather read it than talk to you."

"Oh, thank you, Miss Earle. There can be no possible doubt about your meaning now."

"Well, I am glad of that, Mr. Morris. I am always pleased to think that I can speak in such a way as not to be misunderstood."

"I don't see any possible way of misunderstanding that. I wish I did."

"And then, after lunch," said the young lady, "I think I shall finish the book before that time;—if you care to sit beside me or to walk the deck with me, I shall be very glad to tell you the story."

"Now, that is perfectly delightful," cried the young man. "You throw a person down into the depths, so that he will appreciate all the more being brought up into the light again."

"Oh, not at all. I have no such dramatic ideas in speaking frankly with you. I merely mean that this forenoon I wish to have to myself, because I am interested in my book. At the end of the forenoon I shall probably be tired of my book and will prefer a talk with you. I don't see why you should think it odd that a person should say exactly what a person means."

"And then I suppose in the evening you will be tired of talking with me, and will want to take up your book again."

"Possibly."

"And if you are, you won't hesitate a moment about saying so?"

"Certainly not."

"Well, you are a decidedly frank young lady, Miss Earle; and, after all, I don't know but what I like that sort of thing best. I think if all the world were honest we would all have a better time of it here."

"Do you really think so?"

"Yes, I do."

"You believe in honesty, then?"

"Why, certainly. Have you seen anything in my conduct or bearing that would induce you to think that I did not believe in honesty?"

"No, I can't say I have. Still, honesty is such a rare quality that a person naturally is surprised when one comes unexpectedly upon it."

George Morris found the forenoon rather tedious and lonesome. He sat in the smoking room, and once or twice he ventured near where Miss Earle sat engrossed in her book, in the hope that the volume might have been put aside for the time, and that he would have some excuse for sitting down and talking with her. Once as he passed she looked up with a bright smile and nodded to him.