Amazing Grace Part 30

"Oh, _you_! No--I supposed that you were ill; but the little kid over there----"

I saw then that there was a tiny girl tucked farther away into the corner, her shoulders heaving between the conflict of pride and grief.

"Cheer up, and I'll tell you a story," the English girl encouraged, and after a few minutes the small flushed face came out of its hiding-place.

"So you thought I was talking to _you_?"

She turned to me laughingly after the smaller bunch of loneliness had been soothed and sent away.

"I was--mistaken----"

"But I'm sure I should have offered to tell you a story--if I had supposed that it would do you any good," she continued.

"Almost anything--any sound of a human voice would do me good now," I answered desperately, and with that sky-rocket sort of spontaneity which you feel you can afford once or twice in a lifetime.

"You're alone?"

"Yes--and miserable."

Her blue eyes were very frank and friendly, and I immediately straightened up with a hope that we might discover some mutual interest nearer and dearer than the Boston Tea-Party.

That's one good thing about a seafaring life--the preliminaries that you are able to do without in making friends. If you meet a nice woman who discovers that her son went to Princeton with your father's friend's nephew you at once take it for granted that you may tell her many things about yourself that are not noted down in your pa.s.sport.

"You're American--of course?" this English girl asked next.

I acquiesced patriotically, but not arrogantly.

"Yes--I'm American! My name's Grace Christie, and I'm a newspaper woman from--from----"

I hesitated, and she looked at me inquiringly.

"I didn't understand the name of the state?" she said.

"Because I haven't told you yet!" I laughed. "I remember other experiences in mentioning my native place to you English. You always say, 'Oh, the place where the negro minstrels come from!'"

She smiled, and her face brightened suddenly.

"The South! How nice! I _love_ Americans!" she exclaimed, confiding the clause about her affection for my countrymen in a lowered voice, and looking around to make sure that no one heard.

Then, after this, it took her about half a minute to invite me out of my corner and to propose that I go and meet her father and mother.

"We'll find them in the library," she ventured, and we did.

"The South! How nice! We _love_ Americans!" they both exclaimed, as we unearthed them a little while later in a corner of the reading-room.

And before they had confided to me their affection for my countrymen they lowered their voices and glanced at their daughter to make sure that she was not listening. They made their observations in precisely the same tone and they looked precisely alike, except that the father had side-whiskers. They were both small and slight and very durably dressed.

"Miss Christie is a newspaper woman--traveling alone!"

The daughter, whom they addressed as "Hilda" made the announcement promptly, and her manner seemed to warn them that if they found this any just cause or impediment they were to speak now or else hereafter forever hold their peace.

"Indeed?" said the mother, looking over my clothes with a questioning air, which, however, did not disapprove. "Indeed?"

"My word!" said the father, also taking stock of me, but his glance got no further than my homesick face. "My _word_!"

But you are not to suppose from the tone that anything had gone seriously wrong with his word. He said it in a gently searching way, as an old grandfather, seeking about blindly on the mantlepiece might say, "My spectacles!"

So realistic was the impression of his peering around mildly in search of something that I almost jumped up from my chair to see if I could, by mistake, be sitting on his word.

"Isn't she young?"

His twinkling little gray eyes sought his wife's as if for corroboration, and she nodded vigorously.

"Indeed, yes, Herbert! But they shed their pinafores long before our girls do, remember!"

Then he turned to his daughter.

"My dear, the American women _are_ so capable!" he said, and she threw him a smile which would have been regarded as impertinent--on English soil.

"Well, I'm sure I've no objections to being an American woman myself,"

she said.

"And you do not mind the loneliness of the trip you're taking?" the mother put in hastily, as if to cover her daughter's remark.

"I didn't--until to-day."

"But we must see to it now that you're not too lonely," she hastened to a.s.sure me. "Where have they put you in the dining-room, my dear?"

I mentioned my table's location.

"Oh, but we'll get the steward to change you at once!" they chorused, when it had been pointed out to them that my position in the salon was isolated and far away from the music of the orchestra.

"We're just next the captain's table," Hilda explained. "We happened to know him and----"

"And it's inspiring to watch the liberties he takes with the menu,"

the father said. "I'd best write down our number, though I'll see the steward myself."

From his pocketbook he produced a card, scribbling their table number upon the back and handing it to me.

I took it and glanced at the legend the face of it bore, first of all, for figures are just figures, even though they do radiate out from the captain's table.

"Mr. Herbert Montgomery, Bannerley Hall, Bannerley, Lancas.h.i.+re," was the way it read.

"Lancas.h.i.+re?" I asked, looking up so quickly that Hilda mistook my emotion for dismay.

"Yes, we live in Lancas.h.i.+re, but----"

"But we're going on to London first," Mrs. Montgomery a.s.sured me.