The Luck of the Irish. Harold MacGrath

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      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? Six months; within that time she might give him the basis of a good education. He was quick enough mentally; all he needed was direction. Perhaps this impulse was born of selfishness, a desire to keep her mind occupied. That she might spoil his life never entered her thoughts.

      On Saturday morning Camden came out of the smoke-room, bored and irritable. He was about to go forward in quest of amusement when he heard feminine laughter the quality of which was ​rather tuneful in his ear. He paused. Then he stepped around the corner of the deck-house and discovered the Irishman in the act of describing some incident evidently humorous. Unobserved, he studied the girl's face. It was one of those singular countenances which in repose is pretty, but which is really beautiful when successive waves of animation pass over it.

      He approached, bowed easily, and asked permission to sit upon the coil of rope.

      "I heard some one laughing; and as there was no one in the smoke-room but professors and preachers and missionaries to whom the odor of tobacco is objectionable, I had to run for it. They have all the comfortable lounges, and the noise is like a church bazaar. I haven't found a soul on board yet who is going around the world just for the fun of it. You are not making the trip, are you, Miss Jones, for the uplift of the spirit?"

      "I am not. I am going around the world to see things, to be amused, and to have other people wait upon me. To sit back and be waited on, that's been the dream of my life."

      "Anything you'd like just now?" asked William.

      Camden threw him an admiring glance. The very words had been on the tip of his own tongue. The Irishman had beaten him out. Then he deliberately set himself about the task of interesting the girl and blanketing William; and by the time the bugle announced luncheon William felt that he had been eliminated. Camden thoroughly enjoyed the play; but it was certain that the ​possibility of his becoming a friend of William Grogan was more than ever remote. William was no fool; he understood that he had been smothered, side-tracked, left at the post; but he took his medicine without murmur.

      He never looked into his likes and dislikes. They formed instantly. Being a philosopher in the rough, he had no determinate phrases by which to express himself upon the subject. He had "hunches." He was not infallible by any means, but the margin of his mistakes was remarkably small. His "hunch" in this particular case was that Camden was a little too "previous." The East Side vernacular had a synonym, and naturally William preferred it. Camden was a "shine." And somewhere along the route he was going to prove it to his individual satisfaction.

      The idea that he had been put on board the Ajax by a special act of Providence to watch over this girl became more fixed, an obsession perhaps. He had drawn a Friar Tuck circle around her, and woe to the man who was unwise enough to step inside.

      He turned in early that night. He was half asleep when his cabin-mates came in. Neither would see sixty again. Greenwood was generally irritable, while Clausen, the Dane, was invariably amiable. What little William had seen of them convinced him that they were as tough as rhinoceroses. Over sixty, and still going back to the deserts with shovels and sun-umbrellas! And what was it all about, anyhow? He gave it up.

      ​Evidently they had been haranguing on deck. They were still arguing as they came in. Vaguely William heard "Nineveh" and "excavations" and "authority." The bone of contention seemed to be the restorations of Shalmaneser I. Finally the audience of one opened his eyes and leaned sleepily over the edge of his bunk. By this time one of the patriarchs was violently waving his shirt to drive home his point.

      "Want a referee?" William asked, gently.

      The two old fellows looked up, blank of eye.

      "Who is this guy, anyhow?"

      "Who, Shalmaneser?"

      "Ye-ah."

      "He was one of the kings of Assyria."

      "Well, say! I thought maybe he was that new Dutchman who's after Hans Wagner's left mitt."

      "Frightful ignorance!" grumbled the shirt-waver.

      Clausen smiled. "Shalmaneser was born thirteen hundred b.c."

      "That lets me out," declared the unregenerate one. "What's the matter with writing one of his descendants and putting the bet up to him? I wouldn't lose any sleep over a guy that's been dead all that time."

      Old Clausen laughed. "I am sorry we waked you, Mr. Grogan."

      "Passed by the censor," replied William, bunching his pillows anew.

      "Sleep? Well, that's reasonable," mumbled ​Greenwood, dropping his shirt indifferently to the floor. "But still I contend—"

      "Low bridge!"

      The cabin became as silent as the tomb of Shalmaneser himself save when a roller broke on the metal sides of the ship under the open port.

      Of course, William had to recount this little adventure the following morning, and thereupon had his first glimpse behind the corner of his school-teacher's past.

      "Can't you see the pair of them rowing over every tombstone they come to? If there's anything left of the Tower of Babel, believe me, some bricks are going to be missing. What's it all about? Who cares? Thirteen hundred before Christ; some past!"

      "Wouldn't you be interested to know how they got water up to the hanging gardens of Babylon, there in the desert? Wouldn't you like to know what machinery they had, how they manufactured their cloths, made their weapons, lived, worked, and died?"

      "Why, sure I would!"

      "Well, your ancients, as you call them, are endeavoring to find out these very things, to learn if humanity has really progressed in all these centuries. My father was a scientist and spent most of his time trying to find some method of overcoming gravity or neutralizing it. There is no other quest so interesting as that pursued by the man of science, the explorer. What hardships accepted unmurmuringly! For money? No. ​Great scientists are dreadful spendthrifts. They ask for nothing but the fact itself, and most of them die in poverty. My father did; and he never found his fact."

      "I'm sorry. I suppose it's because I'm young, alive, and hungry three times a day. You never ran across a young archeologist, did you?"

      "Not that I can recall," she answered, smiling suddenly. After all, she had no right to lecture him. She could have stated her facts without unnecessary heat.

      "So you've had to fight for bread and butter, the same as I have?"

      "Yes." And the little corner of the curtain fell, to be stirred no more that day.

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