Little Miss Grouch Part 13

"No; I'm not here on business. It's a pleasure trip," explained the victim pleasantly.

"Gents' furnishin's must be lookin' up. Go every year?" Mr. Sperry was looking for an opening.

"This is my first trip."

"Your first!" cried the other. "Why, I bin across fifteen times." He conceived the sought-for opening to be before him. "So you're out cuttin' a dash. A sort of haberdash, hey? Haw--haw--haw!" He burst into a paroxysm of self-applausive mirth over his joke, in which a couple of satellites near at hand joined. "Haw--haw--haw!" he roared, stimulated by their support.

The Tyro slowly turned a direct gaze upon his tormentor. "The Western variety of your species," he observed pensively, "p.r.o.nounce that 'hee-haw' rather than 'haw-haw.'"

There was a counter-chuckle, with Judge Enderby leading. Mr. Sperry's mirth subsided. "Say, what's the chap mean?" he appealed to Journay.

"Oh, go eat a thistle," returned that disgusted youth. "He means you're an a.s.s, and you are. Serves you right."

Sperry rose and hulked out of the circle. "I'll see you on deck--later,"

he muttered to the Tyro in pa.s.sing.

Little Miss Grouch turned bright eyes upon him. "Mr. Daddleskink is not addicted to haberdashery exclusively. He also daddles in--"

"Real estate," put in the Tyro.

"Fancy his impudence!" She turned to Lord Guenn. "He wants to buy _my_ house."

"Not the house on the Battery?" said one of the court.

"I say, you know," put in Lord Guenn. "I have a sort of an interest in that house. Had a great-grandfather that was taken in there when he was wounded in one of the colonial wars. The Revolution, I believe you call it."

"Then I suppose you will put in a claim, too, Bertie," said Miss Grouch, and the familiar friendliness of her address caused the Tyro a little unidentified and disconcerting pang.

"Boot's on the other leg," replied the young Englishman. "The house has a claim on us, for hospitality. We paid it in part to old Spencer Forsyth--he was my revered ancestor's friend--when he came over to England after the war. Got a portrait of him now at Guenn Oaks.

Straight, lank, stern, level-eyed, shrewd-faced old boy--regular whackin' old Yankee type. I beg your pardon," he added hastily.

"What for?" asked the Tyro with bland but emphatic inquiry.

Lord Guenn was not precisely slug-witted.

"Stupid of me," he confessed heartily. "What should an American gentleman be but of Yankee type? You know,"--he regarded the Tyro thoughtfully,--"his portrait at Guenn Oaks looks a bit like you."

Little Miss Grouch shot a glance of swift interest and curiosity at the Tyro.

"Very likely," he said. "I'm a Yankee, too, and the type persists.

Speaking of types, there's the finest young German infant in the steerage that ever took first prize in a baby-show."

As strategy this gained but half its object. Up rose Little Miss Grouch with the suggestion that they all make a pilgrimage to see the Incomparable Infant of her adoption. Much disgruntled, the Tyro brought up the rear. Judge Enderby drew him aside as they approached the steerage rail.

"Young man, are you a fighter?"

"Me? I'm the white-winged dove of peace."

"Then I think I'll warn young Sperry that if he molests you I'll see that--"

"Wait a moment, judge. Don't do that."

"Why not?"

"I don't like the notion. A man ought to be able to take care of himself."

"But he's twice your weight. And he's got a record for beating up waiters and cabbies about New York. Now, my boy," the judge slid a gaunt hand along the other's shoulder and paused. The hand also paused; then it gripped, slid along, gripped again.

"Where did you get those muscles?" he demanded.

"Oh, I've wrestled a bit--foot and horseback both," said the other, modestly omitting to mention that he had won the cowboy equine wrestling-match at Denver two years before.

"Hum! That'll be all right. But why did you tell those people your name was Daddleskink?"

"I didn't. Little Miss--Miss Wayne did."

"So she did. Mystery upon mystery. Well, I'm only the counsel in this case; but it isn't safe, you know, to conceal anything from your lawyer."

At this point the voice of royalty was heard demanding the Tyro. The baby, he was informed, wished to see him. If this were so, that Infant Extraordinary showed no evidence of it, being wholly engrossed with the fascinations of his new mother-by-adoption. However, the chance was afforded for the reigning lady to inform her slave that there was to be dancing that evening in the grand salon, and would he be present?

He would! By all his G.o.ds, hopes, and ambitions he would!

As he turned by his liege lady's side, an officer approached and accosted him.

"The captain would like to see you in his cabin at once, if you please."

Among those present at the evening's dance was _not_ Alexander Forsyth Smith, _alias_ Sanders Daddleskink. Great was the wrath of Little Miss Grouch.

IV

Fourth day out.

I don't like this ship or anything about it; its laws, its customs, its manners, methods or morals.

I'm agin the government. Maritime law gives me a cramp. Me for the black flag with the skull and cross-bones.

As for this old Atlantic, I'd as soon be at the bottom as at the top--

SMITH'S LOG.

Peace reigned over that portion of the Atlantic occupied by the Clan Macgregor. The wind had died away in fitful puffs. The waves had subsided. Marked accessions to the deck population were in evidence.

Everybody looked cheerful. But Achilles, which is to say the Tyro, sulked in his tent, otherwise Stateroom 123 D.