Little Miss Grouch Part 2

"You haven't! You haven't got to ever speak to me again. They'll find me, and catch me, and send me back, and I'll marry that--that _Creature_, if that's what you want."

This was the _argumentum ad hominem_ with a vengeance. "_I_ want? What on earth have I got to do with it?"

"Nothing! n.o.body has anything to do with it. n.o.body gives a--a--a _darn_ for me. Oh, I wish I were back home!"

"Now you're talking sense. The pilot-boat is your play."

"Oh! And you said you'd help me." And then the last barrier gave way, and the floods swept down and immersed speech for the moment.

"Oh, come! Brace up, little girl." His voice was all kindness now. "If you're really bound to get away--"

"I am," came the m.u.f.fled voice.

"But have you got any place to go?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"My married sister's in London."

"Truly?"

"I can show you a cablegram if you don't believe me."

"That's all right, then. I'll take a chance. Now for one deep, dark, and deadly plot. If the pilot-boat is after you, they'll look up your name and cabin on the pa.s.senger list."

"I didn't give my real name."

"Oho! Well, your father might wire a description."

"It's just the kind of thing he would do."

"Therefore you'd better change your clothes."

"No. I'd better not. This awful mess is a regular disguise for me."

"And if you could contrive to stop crying--"

"I'm going to cry," said the young lady, with conviction, "all the way over."

"You'll be a cheerful little s.h.i.+pmate!"

"Don't you concern yourself about that," she retorted. "After the pilot leaves, you needn't have me on your mind at all."

"Thank you. Well, suppose you join me over in yonder secluded corner of the deck in about two hours. Is there anybody on board that knows you?"

"How do I know? There might be."

"Then stay out of the way, and keep m.u.f.fled up as you are now. Your own mother wouldn't recognize you through that veil. In fact I don't suppose I'd know you myself, but for your voice."

"Oh, I don't always whisper. But if I try to talk out loud my throat gets funny and I want to c-c-cry--"

"Quit it! Stop. Brace up, now. We'll bluff the thing through somehow.

Just leave it to me and don't worry."

"And now," queried the Tyro of himself, as he watched the forlorn little figure out of sight, "what have I let myself in for this time?"

With a view to gathering information about the functions, habits, and capacities of a pilot-boat, he started down to the office and was seized upon the companionway by a grizzled and sunbaked man of fifty who greeted him joyously.

"Sandy! Is it yourself? Well met to you!"

"h.e.l.lo, Dr. Alderson," returned the young man with warmth. "Going over?

What luck for me!"

"Why? Need a chaperon?"

"A cicerone, anyway. It's my first trip, and I don't know a soul aboard."

"Oh, you'll know plenty before we're over. A maiden voyager is a sort of pet aboard s.h.i.+p, particularly if he's an unattached youth. My first was thirty years ago. This is my twenty-seventh."

"You must know all about s.h.i.+ps, then. Tell me about the pilot."

"What about him? He's usually a gay old salt who hasn't been out of sight of land for--"

"That isn't what I want to know. Does he take people back with him?"

"h.e.l.lo! What's this? Don't want to back out already, do you?"

"No. It isn't I."

"Somebody want to go back? That's easily arranged."

"No. They don't want to go back. Not if they can help it. But could word be got to the pilot to take any one off?"

"Oh, yes. If it were sent in time. A telegram to Quarantine would get him, up to an hour or so after we cast off. What's the mystery, Sandy?"

"Tell you later. Thanks, ever so much."

"I'll have you put at my table," called the other after him, as he descended the broad companionway.

So the pilot-boat scheme was feasible, then. If the unknown weeper's father had prompt notice--from the disciple of Terpsich.o.r.e, for example--he might get word to the pilot and inst.i.tute a search.

Meditating upon the appearance and behavior of the dock-dancer, the Tyro decided that he'd go to any lengths to see the thing through just for the pleasure of frustrating him.

"Though what on earth he wants to marry her for, _I_ don't see," he thought. "She ought to marry an undertaker."

And he sat down to write his mother a pilot-boat letter, a.s.suring her that he had thus far survived the perils of the deep and had already found a job as knight-errant to the homeliest and most lugubrious girl on the seven seas. At the warning call for the closing of the mails he hastened to the rendezvous on deck. She was there before him, still m.u.f.fled up, still swollen of feature, and still, as he indignantly put it to himself, "blubbering."