LITMIR.BIZ

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      Anna-Rose rebuked her, and said that the proper spirit in which to start on a great adventure was one of faith and enthusiasm, and that one didn't have doubts.

      Anna-Felicitas said she hadn't any doubts really, but that she was very hungry, not having had anything that could be called a meal since breakfast, and that she felt like the sheep in "Lycidas," the hungry ones who looked up and were not fed, and she quoted the lines in case Anna-Rose didn't recollect them (which Anna-Rose deplored, for she knew the lines by heart, and if there was any quoting to be done liked to do it herself), and said she felt just like that—"Empty," said Anna-Felicitas, "and yet swollen. When do you suppose people have food on board ships? I don't believe we'd mind nearly so much about—oh well, about leaving England, if it was after dinner."

      "I'm not minding leaving England," said Anna-Rose quickly. "At least, not more than's just proper."

      "Oh, no more am I, of course," said Anna-Felicitas airily. "Except what's proper."

      "And even if we were feeling it dreadfully," said Anna-Rose, with a little catch in her voice, "which, of course, we're not, dinner wouldn't make any difference. Dinner doesn't alter fundamentals."

      "But it helps one to bear them," said Anna-Felicitas.

      "Bear!" repeated Anna-Rose, her chin in the air. "We haven't got much to bear. Don't let me hear you talk of bearing things, Anna-F."

      "I won't after dinner," promised Anna-Felicitas.

      They thought perhaps they had better ask somebody whether there wouldn't soon be something to eat, but the other passengers had all disappeared. They were by themselves on the gloomy deck, and there were no lights. The row of cabin windows along the wall were closely shuttered, and the door they had come through when first they came on deck was shut too, and they couldn't find it in the dark. It seemed so odd to be feeling along a wall for a door they knew was there and not be able to find it, that they began to laugh; and the undiscoverable door cheered them up more than anything that had happened since seeing the last of Uncle Arthur.

      "It's like a game," said Anna-Rose, patting her hands softly and vainly along the wall beneath the shuttered windows.

      "It's like something in 'Alice in Wonderland,'" said Anna-Felicitas, following in her tracks.

      A figure loomed through the mist and came toward them. They left off patting, and stiffened into straight and motionless dignity against the wall till it should have passed. But it didn't pass. It was a male figure in a peaked cap, probably a steward, they thought, and it stopped in front of them and said in an American voice, "Hello."

      Anna-Rose cast rapidly about in her mind for the proper form of reply to Hello.

      Anna-Felicitas, instinctively responsive to example murmured "Hello" back again.

      Anna-Rose, feeling sure that nobody ought to say just Hello to people they had never seen before, and that Aunt Alice would think they had brought it on themselves by being conspicuous, decided that perhaps "Good-evening" would regulate the situation, and said it.

      "You ought to be at dinner," said the man, taking no notice of this.

      "That's what we think," agreed Anna-Felicitas earnestly.

      "Can you please tell us how to get there?" asked Anna-Rose, still distant, but polite, for she too very much wanted to know.

      "But don't tell us to ask the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas, even more earnestly.

      "No," said Anna-Rose, "because we won't."

      The man laughed. "Come right along with me," he said, striding on; and they followed him as obediently as though such persons as possible böse Buben didn't exist.

      "First voyage I guess," said the man over his shoulder.

      "Yes," said the twins a little breathlessly, for the man's legs were long and they could hardly keep up with him.

      "English?" said the man.

      "Ye—es," said Anna-Rose.

      "That's to say, practically," panted the conscientious Anna-Felicitas.

      "What say?" said the man, still striding on. "I said," Anna-Felicitas endeavoured to explain, hurrying breathlessly after him so as to keep within reach of his ear, "practically."

      "Ah," said the man; and after a silence, broken only by the pantings for breath of the twins, he added: "Mother with you?"

      They didn't say anything to that, it seemed such a dreadful question to have to answer, and luckily he didn't repeat it, but, having got to the door they had been searching for, opened it and stepped into the bright light inside, and putting out his arm behind him pulled them in one after the other over the high wooden door-frame.

      Inside was the same stewardess they had seen earlier in the afternoon, engaged in heatedly describing what sounded like grievances to an official in buttons, who seemed indifferent. She stopped suddenly when the man appeared, and the official took his hands out of his pockets and became alert and attentive, and the stewardess hastily picked up a tray she had set down and began to move away along a passage.

      The man, however, briefly called "Hi," and she turned round and came back even more quickly than she had tried to go.

      "You see," explained Anna-Rose in a pleased whisper to Anna-Felicitas, "it's Hi she answers to."

      "Yes," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "It's waste of good circumlocutions to throw them away on her."

      "Show these young ladies the dining-room," said the man.

      "Yes, sir," said the stewardess, as polite as you please.

      He nodded to them with a smile that developed for some reason into a laugh, and turned away and beckoned to the official to follow him, and went out again into the night.

      "Who was that nice man?" inquired Anna-Rose, following the stewardess down a broad flight of stairs that smelt of india-rubber and machine-oil and cooking all mixed up together.

      "And please," said Anna-Felicitas with mild severity, "don't tell us to ask the Captain, because we really do know better than that."

      "I thought you must be relations," said the stewardess.

      "We are," said Anna-Rose. "We're twins."

      The stewardess stared. "Twins what of?" she asked.

      "What of?" echoed Anna-Rose. "Why, of each other, of course."

      "I meant relations of the Captain's," said the stewardess shortly, eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.

      "You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind," said Anna-Felicitas. "He is no relation of ours."

      "You're not even friends, then?" asked the stewardess, pausing to stare round at them at a turn in the stairs as they followed her down arm-in-arm.

      "Of course we're friends," said Anna-Rose with some heat. "Do you suppose we quarrel?"

      "No, I didn't suppose you quarrelled with the Captain," said the stewardess tartly. "Not on board this ship anyway."

      She didn't know which of the two she disliked most, the short girl or the long girl.

      "You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas gently. "Obsessed!" repeated the stewardess, tossing her head. She was unacquainted with the word, but instantly suspected it of containing a reflection on her respectability. "I've been a widow off and on for ten years now," she said angrily, "and I guess it would take more than even the Captain to obsess me."

      They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room, and the stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before indignantly leaving them and going upstairs again to say, "If you're friends, what do you want to know his name for, then?"

      "Whose name?" asked Anna-Felicitas.

      "The Captain's," said the stewardess.

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