The Cricket Part 50

"Oh," sighed the girl, "they bore me."

Captain O'Leary had made several attempts to get an opening to speak to her in the afternoon, but she had successfully evaded them. Mrs.

Darlington in search of the bonny Captain spoke to her.

"Your handsome neighbour isn't on deck?"

"Isn't he?" said Isabelle. "I hadn't noticed."

Mrs. Darlington stared, laughed, retreated and the story went the rounds. It amused O'Leary, and it also piqued him. He was used to being noticed by ladies in his vicinity. He made up his mind that he would make that girl look at him. He intended to lay siege to Miss Watts, but he came upon Isabelle unattended, in deep contemplation of the sea, and he promptly sat down beside her.

"I beg pardon, Miss Bryce, but are you Irish?" he said deliberately.

She turned big, enquiring eyes upon him.

"No. Why?"

"I thought n.o.body could be as sad as you look except an Irishman."

"I'm not Irish," she said, and returned her gaze to the sea.

"I am," he exclaimed.

No answer.

"We're very sensitive to--to rebuffs."

"I suppose so. You were shot in a rebuff, weren't you?" she said, politely.

His laugh rang out at that.

"Yes, but we're not so sensitive to a rebuff from guns as we are to a rebuff from ladies."

"No?"

"Have ye taken an unconquerable dislike to me, Miss Bryce?" he begged.

"I think you're very--pleasant," admitted Isabelle.

"Couldn't ye take a lesson from me?"

"You think I'm unpleasant?"

"I think your heart is as hard as the rocks in Flodden Field," he exclaimed.

"Being pleasant hasn't anything to do with your heart," was her calm reply.

"Hasn't it? Ye think I can be as pleasant as I am, and still have a hard, black heart?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"So you don't like me?" he persisted.

"Yes, rather. But I'm a little tired of heroes just now," was her reply.

"I'm afraid I don't qualify," he said curtly, "but as a possible nuisance I'll take mesilf off."

He rose. He stopped behind her chair and leaned over her to say:

"That rebuff, ye spoke of, in France. After all, it was an amateur affair, as rebuffs go."

With which he marched off down the deck, his head very high in the air.

Miss Watts sat down beside Isabelle with a quick glance at her.

"Weren't you talking to Captain O'Leary?"

"He talked to me."

"Isn't he charming? All the women are so excited about him."

"That's what's the matter with him."

"Is he conceited?"

"Fearfully!" quoth Isabelle.

She went over that interview dozens of times. Of course he would never look at her again. She remembered how Mrs. Darlington purred over him--how Madam Van d.y.k.e patted him. That was the way to make him like you, but she had scratched and spit at him, like an angry kitten. She couldn't imagine why she had acted like that. She admired him immensely.

He was more attractive than Jerry Paxton or Sidney Cartel or any man she had ever loved, and yet--she had deliberately made him hate her. Well, anyhow, she liked the idea of her heart being as hard as the rocks in Flodden Field. It had an important sound. He could never say that to the gushing Mrs. Darlington, or any of the other women who ran around after him.

So she closed the chapter of their acquaintance on the boat, but she worked out a scene or two at Bermuda, including an aeroplane flight in which he and she were lost in the clouds. On the whole she preferred the things she made up to the things that happened.

As they neared the Islands the weather grew warmer. White clothes appeared on deck. Captain O'Leary appeared in an undress uniform that caused a flutter in feminine hearts. The night of the day of her encounter with her hero was stuffy and very hot.

Isabelle was restless and wakeful. She tossed and turned and tried to banish all thoughts of the Irishman, but it was no use. She leaned out of her upper berth to gaze down upon the sleeping features of Miss Watts.

"How wonderful to be so old that you don't care about handsome Irishmen!" mused Isabelle.

A few minutes later she decided that, unless she had some air, she would perish. She made a most careful descent from her perch, without waking her companion. She opened the door cautiously, and put her head out. It was a trifle cooler in the pa.s.sageway. Her watch reported three o'clock. There would be no one awake at that hour.

She put on her slippers, and the tight little orange-and-black Chinese cloak. She left the door open, and went into the corridor. She walked up and down, up and down, trying to believe that she was cooler. It was rather spooky! Several stateroom doors stood open, and the sound of sleepers--breathing evenly, or snoring--came to her as she pa.s.sed.

Finally she turned in at her own door, slipped off the Chinese coat, and laid it across the chair. She moved very quietly not to disturb Miss Watts. She put her foot on the extreme edge of the lower berth to mount, when the boat rolled and threw her off her balance. To save herself from falling, she put out her hand; it descended upon the upturned face--it should have been the face of Miss Watts, but it was not. Her hand fell upon a moustache! With one bound Isabelle was out of the door, into the pa.s.sageway, and into the next open door.

"Miss Watts!" she gasped.

"Yes, what is it?"--sleepily.

"Oh, nothing. I went out to get a breath of air. I left the door open, but I wasn't just sure----"

She was climbing up into her berth during this explanation. Suddenly a hideous thought caused her to collapse on the edge of her bed--she had left her Chinese coat behind!