The passenger
herself was already at the breakfast-table.
"Cap'n's on deck, I s'pose?" said the mate, preparing to resume
negotiations where they were broken off the night before. "I hope you
feel better than you did last night."
"Yes, thank you," said she.
"You'll make a good sailor in time," said the mate.
"I hope not," said Miss Alsen, who thought it time to quell a gleam of
peculiar tenderness plainly apparent in the mate's eyes. "I shouldn't
like to be a sailor even if I were a man."
"Why not?" inquired the other.
"I don't know," said the girl meditatively; "but sailors are generally
such scrubby little men, aren't they?"
"SCUBBY?" repeated the mate, in a dazed voice.
"I'd sooner be a soldier," she continued; "I like soldiers--they're so
manly. I wish there was one here now."
"What for?" inquired the mate, in the manner of a sulky schoolboy.
"If there was a man like that here now," said Miss Alsen thoughtfully,
"I'd dare him to mustard old Towson's nose."
"Do what?" inquired the astonished mate.
"Mustard old Towson's nose," said Miss Alsen, glancing lightly from the
cruet-stand to the portrait.
The infatuated man hesitated a moment, and then, reaching over to the
cruet, took out the spoon, and with a pale, determined face, indignantly
daubed the classic features of the provision dealer.
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