"And do you consider the statement valuable?" I asked, laughing out. "You had better ask your young friend herself."

Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. "I couldn't do that."

On which I was the more amused that I had to explain I was only amused.

"What does it signify now?"

"I thought you thought everything signified. You were so full," she cried, "of signification!"

"Yes, but we're further out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything becomes absolute."

"What else _can_ he do with decency?" Mrs. Nettlepoint went on. "If, as my son, he were never to speak to her it would be very rude and you'd think that stranger still. Then _you_ would do what he does, and where would be the difference?"

"How do you know what he does? I haven't mentioned him for twenty-four hours."

"Why, she told me herself. She came in this afternoon."

"What an odd thing to tell you!" I commented.

"Not as she says it. She says he's full of attention, perfectly devoted--looks after her all the time. She seems to want me to know it, so that I may approve him for it."

"That's charming; it shows her good conscience."

"Yes, or her great cleverness."

Something in the tone in which Mrs. Nettlepoint said this caused me to return in real surprise: "Why what do you suppose she has in her mind?"

"To get hold of him, to make him go so far he can't retreat. To marry him perhaps."

"To marry him? And what will she do with Mr. Porterfield?"

"She'll ask me just to make it all right to him--or perhaps you."

"Yes, as an old friend"--and for a moment I felt it awkwardly possible.

But I put to her seriously: "_Do_ you see Jasper caught like that?"

"Well, he's only a boy--he's younger at least than she."

"Precisely; she regards him as a child. She remarked to me herself today, that is, that he's so much younger."

Mrs. Nettlepoint took this in. "Does she talk of it with you? That shows she has a plan, that she has thought it over!"

I've sufficiently expressed--for the interest of my anecdote--that I found an oddity in one of our young companions, but I was far from judging her capable of laying a trap for the other. Moreover my reading of Jasper wasn't in the least that he was catchable--could be made to do a thing if he didn't want to do it. Of course it wasn't impossible that he might be inclined, that he might take it--or already have taken it--into his head to go further with his mother's charge; but to believe this I should require still more proof than his always being with her. He wanted at most to "take up with her" for the voyage. "If you've questioned him perhaps you've tried to make him feel responsible," I said to my fellow critic.

"A little, but it's very difficult. Interference makes him perverse. One has to go gently. Besides, it's too absurd--think of her age. If she can't take care of herself!" cried Mrs. Nettlepoint.

"Yes, let us keep thinking of her age, though it's not so prodigious. And if things get very bad you've one resource left," I added.

She wondered. "To lock her up in her cabin?"

"No--to come out of yours."

"Ah never, never! If it takes that to save her she must be lost.

Besides, what good would it do? If I were to go above she could come below."

"Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you."

"_Could_ I?" Mrs. Nettlepoint demanded in the manner of a woman who knew her son.

In the saloon the next day, after dinner, over the red cloth of the tables, beneath the swinging lamps and the racks of tumblers, decanters and wine-gla.s.ses, we sat down to whist, Mrs. Peck, to oblige, taking a hand in the game. She played very badly and talked too much, and when the rubber was over a.s.suaged her discomfiture (though not mine--we had been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot. We had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack.

"She hasn't spoken to me yet--she won't do it," she remarked in a moment.

"Is it possible there's any one on the ship who hasn't spoken to you?"

"Not that girl--she knows too well!" Mrs. Peck looked round our little circle with a smile of intelligence--she had familiar communicative eyes.

Several of our company had a.s.sembled, according to the wont, the last thing in the evening, of those who are cheerful at sea, for the consumption of grilled sardines and devilled bones.

"What then does she know?"

"Oh she knows _I_ know."

"Well, we know what Mrs. Peck knows," one of the ladies of the group observed to me with an air of privilege.

"Well, you wouldn't know if I hadn't told you--from the way she acts,"

said our friend with a laugh of small charm.

"She's going out to a gentleman who lives over there--he's waiting there to marry her," the other lady went on, in the tone of authentic information. I remember that her name was Mrs. Gotch and that her mouth looked always as if she were whistling.

"Oh he knows--I've told him," said Mrs. Peck.

"Well, I presume every one knows," Mrs. Gotch contributed.

"Dear madam, is it every one's business?" I asked.

"Why, don't you think it's a peculiar way to act?"--and Mrs. Gotch was evidently surprised at my little protest.

"Why it's right there--straight in front of you, like a play at the theatre--as if you had paid to see it," said Mrs. Peck. "If you don't call it public!"

"Aren't you mixing things up? What do you call public?"

"Why the way they go on. They're up there now."

"They cuddle up there half the night," said Mrs. Gotch. "I don't know when they come down. Any hour they like. When all the lights are out they're up there still."

"Oh you can't tire them out. They don't want relief--like the ship's watch!" laughed one of the gentlemen.

"Well, if they enjoy each other's society what's the harm?" another asked. "They'd do just the same on land."

"They wouldn't do it on the public streets, I presume," said Mrs. Peck.