LITMIR.BIZ

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My name is Richard Camden. I believe we sit at the same table."

      "Mine is William Grogan, and this is my first trip anywhere that amounts to anything."

      "I envy you. Everything will be new and strange. I'm not going around myself. Called to Europe suddenly; and this was the only boat leaving at the time. I had to hustle."

      "Ye-ah. I noticed that when you came on board."

      Camden laughed. "I recollect bumping into you. I apologize again."

      "Passed by the censor," said William, with a wave of his hand. "I wonder these gulls never get tired."

      "Gulls never tire."

      "Same class as suckers; I see. They keep coming back."

      Camden laughed again. This red-headed young man was keen. Trust a New-Yorker to get the undertow. Merely the inflection of tone, and yet he had caught the ironic spirit back of the words.

      "The young lady who sat between us last night at dinner is charming."

      An indefinable something warned William to be wary. He had a natural distrust for well-dressed idlers, especially when they spoke of women. Was the man trying to pump him?

      "You're right; she is. I've known her for three years."

      ​"Three years? Why, you're old friends, then!"

      "Well, you wouldn't exactly call it that. What you might call a passing acquaintance." William considered that very good. "She's a school-teacher around the corner from my shop. I had no idea she was going to make the trip; and she was surprised to see me." Inwardly he communed, "William, you're some Ananias, take it from me!"

      What was his purpose in these half-lies? It was too remote, too vague for him to define. He was doubtless endeavoring to throw some kind of protection around the lonely girl by letting the world at large know that William Grogan's two fists were hers for the asking. In a sense it was primordial, the ancient male idea, the warning off of all other males.

      "I did not quite get the name," said Camden.

      "Grogan—William Grogan," said William, a sardonic grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.

      "I mean the young lady's name."

      "Oh!" William eyed the racing foam below speculatively. "Miss Jones; not very hard to remember."

      "You can't remember anything you don't hear distinctly. Will you have a cigarette?" asked the man Camden, offering his case.

      "I roll a Durham once in a while, but no dope for mine. Say, I wonder if there's any professional gamblers on board? Signs are hanging up in the smoke-room."

      "Professionals on a trip like this? Good Lord, ​no! They'd starve to death. They ply generally between New York, Liverpool, and Cherbourg."

      "Well, that's too bad. I thought of course there' d be a few sharks in this school of mackerel. I've been building for weeks on seeing the gambler held up by some handsome outsider and the foolish young man, traveling with the firm's money, paid back his losses. Shucks!"

      "I don't believe you stand in much danger." Camden narrowed his eyes as the smoke from his cigarette volleyed past his cheek.

      "They couldn't take a peek at a nickel of mine. This little old letter of credit," said William, slapping his coat pocket, "is for expenses only. I play a game of pinochle once in a while; but beyond that, nothing doing. There's no something-for-nothing on my program. Work and cards don't mix."

      "True enough. I like to gamble for small stakes, just enough to make the game interesting. But there'll be no chance on board the Ajax. There is, however, a lot of sport in double canfield. You can knock half a day galley-west with a pack of cards. Drop into the smoke-room to-night and I'll teach you a game or two of solitaire."

      "That 'll be fine. So long as I don't have to dig in my jeans, any kind of a game for mine."

      "All right, then; any time after dinner. Good morning."

      William did not leave the rail at once. He was puzzled. Anything which did not appear to come in the natural order of events made him suspicious. ​He knew instinctively that he was not of the sort of men the Camden caliber picked out for acquaintanceship, not even on a ship like the Ajax. What was he really fishing for? Why should this matinée idol bother to ask William Grogan what the school-teacher's name was, when all he had to do was to look at the dining-room chart? The puzzle was not solvable.

      "Pumping me, all right. But I know all about pumps; and a lot you'll get up through my pipes, Percival."

      Nevertheless, he sought his chair, vaguely perturbed; and it took him some time to get back into the final pages of Cellini. He had laid the book aside and was in a half-dream when he heard the foot-rest of the other chair rattle. He jumped to his feet.

      "Good morning," he greeted.

      "Good morning. No, thanks; don't bother with the rugs. You're a good sailor, too, it seems. Isn't it wonderful, the sky, the sea, and the wind? So you've finished Messer Cellini? Isn't that a tremendous chronicle? Think of being a personal friend of Michelangelo and his contemporaries!"

      "Say, if he was alive, we wouldn't need to worry about white hopes. He wouldn't spill the beans over a pound or two in weight."

      "Beans?"

      "Aw, there I go, into the rough-neck stuff again! I've got so used to talking that way I can't help it."

      "Perhaps you don't try hard enough."

      ​"Say, supposing you start in and tell me where I get off on the straight talk?"

      "You mean correct you? That's a pretty large order. Suppose you make it a point not to use slang whenever you talk to me?"

      "All right. But I'll have to let down easy. You see, I couldn't make myself understood if I had to give it up all at once. You understand me?" He wondered why she smiled.

      "Oh yes. School-children have a marvelous faculty of picking up slang phrases."

      "Say, but this Cellini guy—"

      "What does guy really mean?"

      "A guy? Why, a guy is a guy!" William rumpled his hair perplexedly.

      "Mr. Grogan, you don't know what the words mean yourself, half the time. How, then, do you expect us outsiders to understand?"

      "I guess you've got me there, all right. Well, this Cellini—Dumas wrote a story around him."

      "Ascanio."

      "That's the boy. My! but the old geezer did some tall scrapping. He only ate when he couldn't get anybody to fight with. And I thought this Cellini person was an invention of Dumas'! Well, I'm on my way around the world, and maybe my bumps won't be strained when I land in little old New York again!"

      By the time the steward's boy came around with the broth and crackers William had told the story of his life, the humdrum of it, his ambitions which had promised to die of attrition, and then the ​magical windfall out of nowhere. Her summing up of this serio-comic tale would have dumfounded him, for it consisted solely of the conviction that he possessed the most expressive blue eyes she had ever seen.

      On her side, however, she had no confidences to exchange. Indeed, William hadn't expected any. He was perfectly content to find an ear into which to pour his own. It was something new to have so good a listener. She seemed to understand, too; and it was a rare treat to watch the varying expressions of her face as he went along. He was faring forth on quicksands, bravely and boldly, only he was not aware of it.

      He amused her, scattered self-thought, made her forget, temporarily at least, the ghosts which haunted her. She really wanted to be alone, and yet she knew that in loneliness lay her danger. … An impulse came to her. Why not take this whimsical young man under her teacher's wing, and without his sensing it teach him what paintings meant, music, architecture, and peoples?

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