"She laughs at me!" fumed the young man, inwardly. He was angry,
conscious of those unlucky wing-and-wing ears, vexed at his own
boldness. "I have been offensive. She laughs at me." He generalized from
long inexperience of a subject to which he had given acutely interested
thought: "They always do."
Anger did not prevent him, however, from noting that his neighbor
traveled alone, that she must be an Englishwoman, and yet that she
diffused, somehow, an aura of the Far East and of romance. He shot many
a look toward her deck-chair that evening, and when she had gone below,
strategically bought a cigar, sat down in the chair to light it, and by
a carefully shielded match contrived to read the tag that fluttered on
the arm: "B. Forrester, Hongkong."
Afterward he remembered that by early daylight he might have read it for
nothing; and so, for economic penance, smoked to the bitter end, finding
the cigar disagreeable but manly. At all events, homesickness had
vanished in a curious impatience for the morrow. Miss Forrester: he
would sit beside Miss Forrester at table. If only they both were
traveling first-class!--then she might be a great lady.
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