The Honorable Percival. Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice

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СКАЧАТЬ you don't mind," she said, flinging the finished braid over her shoulder, "I wish you'd write your grand name on my Panama hat sometime; it's going to be a souvenir of the trip."

      With an unintelligible answer, he made his escape. His worst fears were realized: he had given an inch; she had taken an ell. The crack in the shell of his privacy was widening alarmingly and peeping through, he shuddered at what he saw.

IV

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COUNTER-CURRENTS

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      Day after day the steamship Saluria sailed the most amiable of seas. So clear was the atmosphere at times that a glimpse could be had of the planet Venus disporting herself in the heavens at high noon. Life on shipboard became permeated with that spirit of fellowship which is apt to make itself felt the moment the restraints of convention are lifted. Even the Honorable Percival succumbed in a measure to the insidious charm of the long, lazy days that were punctuated only by the ship's bells.

      He was still an apparently indifferent spectator of all that was going on, but the fact that he was a spectator showed that he was relaxing the rigid rules he had laid down for himself. The only person who addressed him during the day was Bobby Boynton, who gave him a free and easy greeting when they met in the morning, and then seemed to forget his existence. His fear that she would follow up the conversation begun in the companionway was apparently groundless, for she seemed ridiculously engrossed in other things.

      Among the half-dozen young people on board who were perpetually organizing tournaments, dances, card-parties, and concerts, she was the most indefatigable. Not being responsible to any one for her actions, and possessing a creative imagination, she indulged in escapades that provided the older people with their chief topic of conversation. Her sternest critics, however, smiled as they shook their heads.

      The captain from the first had treated her very much as he treated the other passengers. The parental rôle was not a familiar one, and he shirked it. The only time that he rose to a sense of duty was when he found her in the writing-room, her head bent over a desk. Then rumor said authority was bruskly asserted, letters were confiscated, and tears flowed instead of ink.

      About the time the Honorable Percival was congratulating himself on having put her in her proper place, and having kept her there, his confidence received a shock. Coming on deck one day, he found her again seated in his steamer-chair. This time she made no pretense of rising, but obligingly made a place for him on the foot-rest. The invitation was loftily declined.

      "I've been waiting a coon's age for you," she said, with an audacious upward glance. "I wanted to tell you that I've put you on the program for a song at the concert to-morrow night."

      "Quite impossible; I shouldn't think of such a thing for a moment," he began; then curiosity got the better of his annoyance. "But if I may ask, how on earth did you know that I sang?"

      Bobby's eyes danced, and her submerged dimple came to the surface.

      "I didn't," she said; "but they dared me to ask you, and I wouldn't take a dare, would you?"

      "I am afraid I don't quite follow you," said Percival.

      "Well, you see," explained Bobby, "they dared me to ask you, and I didn't mind, because I was dead sure you sang. A person ought to be able to do anything with a voice like yours."

      Percival stroked his small mustache meditatively.

      "As a matter of fact, you know," he said in a tone from which the chill had vanished, "I suppose an English voice is rather conspicuous among Americans, isn't it?"

      "Yours is," said Bobby; "that is, what I've heard of it."

      And then she was gone like a flash, leaving the Honorable Percival to cogitate upon the extraordinary manners of American girls, and a certain cleverness they at times displayed. Lady Hortense Vevay, for instance, had had four uninterrupted weeks in which to discover anything unusual in his voice, and he must confess she had been rather stupid about it. But why had that impossible young American ruined a pretty compliment by her parting shot? Did she feel that she had any claim upon him? Did she expect him to pay her any attention? Preposterous!

      The first break in the lazy routine of the voyage came when the dim outline of the Hawaiian Islands gradually took definite shape in the form of old Diamond Head which loomed strangely out of the water. Sea-gulls came out to meet the steamer, circling on white wings against the blue, and the air grew soft and fragrant with the odors of flowers and tropical fruits.

      As the Saluria slowly swung into the harbor and dropped anchor, the promenade-deck was full of lively, chattering people, all arrayed in white, and all eager for the first glimpse of the strange land. Dozens of naked native boys were swimming about the steamer, causing general merriment by their dexterity in diving for coins. One saucy brown imp who had just come up with a silver piece in his mouth, caught sight of the Englishman in the crowd above, and with a shrewdness born of experience called out: "Hi there, English Johnny! Me no 'Merican boy; me Johnny Bull boy. Me no want dime; want shilling! Here you are! Aw right!"

      The invitation met no response. The Honorable Percival greeted with calm disdain the laugh that followed it. He was not in the least interested in impertinent young Hawaiians. A matter of much greater importance occupied his attention. He had just been informed by the purser that, owing to the crowded condition of the steamer, he would be compelled to share his stateroom with another passenger during the remainder of the voyage. This catastrophe darkened even the tropical sun. He was indignant with the company in San Francisco that had failed to explain this contingency; he was angry with the purser for not being able to change the disagreeable order of things; but most of all he was furious with the unknown stranger, whom in the blackness of his mood he pictured as either a fat German or a chattering American.

      So perturbed was he over this circumstance that he could not refrain from venting his ill humor on somebody, and his valet being unavailable at the time, he took it out upon himself.

      "No, I am not going ashore," he said somewhat curtly to Bobby Boynton, who had organized a party with sufficient diversions to last two days instead of one.

      "You'd better come along," said Bobby. "We are going to shoot up the town of Honolulu."

      "I don't know that I should particularly care for that," said Percival, coldly.

      She looked at him with frank curiosity.

      "Say, why don't you ever let yourself have a good time?" she asked. "Everybody else is going except the captain. He's got the gout. Says he's carrying his grandfather's cocktails around in his starboard toe."

      She waited for a response, but none came.

      "It's going to be awfully stupid here with everybody gone," she persisted. "Why won't you come?"

      She was dressed in a short white serge and the Panama hat, which as yet was innocent of autographs. It was astonishing what a difference the absence of conflicting colors made in her appearance.

      For a moment Percival's decision wavered before those pleading СКАЧАТЬ