Little Miss Grouch Part 28

IX

Ninth day out.

Sixty days has September, April, June and November.

From January until May The rain it raineth every day.

All the rest have thirty-one Without a single gleam of sun.

If any should have thirty-two, They'd be dull and dirty, too!

ADAPTED BY SMITH FOR SMITH'S LOG

Rain, fog, mist, drizzle, more rain. Such was the waste world through which the Clan Macgregor wallowed. Other ships pa.s.sed her, hooting as they went. Small craft began to loom up under her ma.s.sive bows, and slide away from beneath her towering stern, always eluding Fate, as it seemed, by miraculous inches. And slower and ever slower moved the sea-mammoth, lugubriously trumpeting her distress and dismay at the plight in which she found herself.

Thus and no otherwise would the Tyro have vented his grief and chagrin, had he possessed competent vocal organs, more lost and befogged than the ship which bore him and his sorrow to an alien land. For breakfast had come and gone, and then luncheon and dinner, and nowhere had he caught so much as a glimpse of Little Miss Grouch. At ten o'clock that night he was standing immersed in gloom, within and without, staring out over the rail into a world of blackness. Far out in the void, a bell tolled. The Tyro resumed his purposeless promenade, meditating cheerlessly upon buried hopes.

Now, were individuals required, as are craft, to carry fog signals, this maritime record might be something other than it is. The collision was head on, and the impact severe. The lighter craft recoiled against the rail.

"Oh!" she said.

"You!" cried the Tyro, with the voice of glad tidings.

"How you frightened me!" she said, but the tone indicated more of relief, not to say content, than alarm.

"I'm sorry. Where have you been all day?"

"Packing."

"Oh!" There was a pause. Then: "Lord Guenn doesn't know."

"Doesn't know what?"

"Doesn't know why. I asked him, you know. When you--er--disappeared. So I have to ask you again. Why?"

"Aren't you afraid that when you die you'll change into a question-mark?"

"Not at all. I intend to be answered before I die. Long before.

One--two--three; why?"

But she was ready for the question now. "About Mr. Van Dam, you mean?"

said she with elaborate carelessness. "Oh, well, you see, I'd be Mrs.

Denyse's cousin in that case and, after a week of her, I've concluded that it isn't worth the price."

"Hard-hearted Parent will be displeased."

"I'm afraid so. Perhaps he'll cut me off with a shilling."

"I hope so."

"Now, that isn't a bit kind of you," she complained. "I'm not fitted for poverty. Not that it would be literally a shilling. But to have to do everything on twelve thousand a year--"

"How much?"

"That's all I can call my really own."

"And you consider that insufficient?" asked the Tyro, in a queer, strained voice.

"Not as long as papa pays my princ.i.p.al bills," she explained. "But of course, to live on--" An expressive shrug furnished the conclusion.

"For some years I lived on less than a tenth of it," said he.

"No! It couldn't be done."

"Don't you know anything at all about life?" he demanded, almost angrily.

"Of course I do. But I don't bother about money and such things."

"I do. I've had to all my life. Even now, when I consider myself very well off, I can make only a little more than the income which you consider mere pin-money."

"Yet you can buy houses on the Battery," she insinuated.

"Only through the option that gives me the inside track. And even that will make a huge hole in my pile."

"Ah, well," she said petulantly. "I don't see what difference it makes.

Anyway, I'm bored. Aren't you going to be any more amusing than this at Guenn Oaks?"

"I'm not coming to Guenn Oaks."

"Who are you to say what you are or are not going to do--Slave?" she said with her most imperious air.

At the tone, he rallied a difficult smile. "I'm the Honest Workingman.

Whereas you are--" he spread his hands out in a suave gesture, which was exceedingly displeasing to Little Miss Grouch--"a mirage."

"A mirage?" she repeated.

"The Eternally Unattainable."

"Long words always make my head ache."

"I'll state it mathematically. If you concentrate your powerful intellect upon the problem you will perceive that two plus two equals four."

"In that faith I live and die! But what it has to do with Bertie Guenn's invitation--"

"The sum proves up equally when raised to thousands, or millions."

"What concern has a Perfect Pig with figures?" she asked wistfully, and lifted a hesitant hand in the darkness.

It fell lightly on his arm. In the soft gloom her face glimmered, dimly warm to his vision, upturned to his. The fog covered much that might otherwise have been seen, but failed to smother what might have been (and in fact was, as Judge Enderby and Dr. Alderson, turning the angle of the deck, halted and tactfully melted away) heard. To wit:--