第29章 IX.(3)

"Well, I don't see what there is to laugh at so much. When you ask me a thing I tell you just what I think, and it seems to set you off in a perfect gale. Don't you expect people to say what they think?""I think it's beautiful," said the young man, going into the gale, and I've got to expecting it of you, at any rate. But--but it's always so surprising! It isn't what you expect of people generally, is it?""I don't expect it of you," said Lottie.

"No?" asked Mr. Breckon, in another gale. "Am I so uncandid?""I don't know about uncandid. But I should say you were slippery."At this extraordinary criticism the young man looked graver than he had yet been able to do since the beginning of their acquaintance. He said, presently, "I wish you would explain what you mean by slippery.""You're as close as a trap!"

"Really?"

"It makes me tired."

"If you're not too tired now I wish you would say how.""Oh, you understand well enough. You've got me to say what I think about all sorts of things, and you haven't expressed your opinion on a single, solitary point?"Lottie looked fiercely out to sea, turning her face so as to keep him from peering around into it in the way he had. For that reason, perhaps, he did not try to do so. He answered, seriously: "I believe you are partly right. I'm afraid I haven't seemed quite fair. Couldn't you attribute my closeness to something besides my slipperiness?" He began to laugh again. "Can't you imagine my being interested in your opinions so much more than my own that I didn't care to express mine?"Lottie said, impatiently, "Oh, pshaw!" She had hesitated whether to say, "Rats!""But now," he pursued, "if you will suggest some point on which I can give you an opinion, I promise solemnly to do so," but he was not very solemn as he spoke.

"Well, then, I will," she said. "Don't yon think it's very strange, to say the least, for a minister to be always laughing so much?"Mr. Breckon gave a peal of delight, and answered, "Yes, I certainly do."He controlled himself so far as to say: "Now I think I've been pretty open with you, and I wish you'd answer me a question. Will you?""Well, I will--one," said Lottie.

"It may be two or three; but I'll begin with one. Why do you think a minister ought to be more serious than other men?""Why? Well, I should think you'd know. You wouldn't laugh at a funeral, would you?""I've been at some funerals where it would have been a relief to laugh, and I've wanted to cry at some weddings. But you think it wouldn't do?""Of course it wouldn't. I should think you'd know as much as that," said Lottie, out of patience with him.

"But a minister isn't always marrying or burying people; and in the, intervals, why shouldn't he be setting them an example of harmless cheerfulness?""He ought to be thinking more about the other world, I should say.""Well, if he believes there is another world--""Why! Don't you?" she broke out on him.

Mr. Breckon ruled himself and continued--"as strenuously and unquestionably as he ought, he has greater reason than other men for gayety through his faith in a happier state of being than this. That's one of the reasons I use against myself when I think of leaving off laughing. Now, Miss Kenton," he concluded, "for such a close and slippery nature, I think I've been pretty frank," and he looked round and down into her face with a burst of laughter that could be heard an the other side of the ship. He refused to take up any serious topic after that, and he returned to his former amusement of making her give herself away.

That night Lottie came to her room with an expression so decisive in her face that Ellen, following it with vague, dark eyes as it showed itself in the glass at which her sister stood taking out the first dismantling hairpins before going to bed, could not fail of something portentous in it.

"Well," said Lottie, with severe finality, "I haven't got any use for THAT young man from this time out. Of all the tiresome people, he certainly takes the cake. You can have him, Ellen, if you want him.""What's the matter with him?" asked Ellen, with a voice in sympathy with the slow movement of her large eyes as she lay in her berth, staring at Lottie.

"There's everything the matter, that oughtn't to be. He's too trivial for anything: I like a man that's serious about one thing in the universe, at least, and that's just what Mr. Breckon isn't." She went at such length into his disabilities that by the time she returned to the climax with which she started she was ready to clamber into the upper berth; and as she snapped the electric button at its head she repeated, "He's trivial.""Isn't it getting rough?" asked Ellen. "The ship seems to be tipping.""Yes, it is," said Lottie, crossly. "Good-night."If the Rev. Mr. Breckon was making an early breakfast in the hope of sooner meeting Lottie, who had dismissed him the night before without encouraging him to believe that she wished ever to see him again, he was destined to disappointment. The deputation sent to breakfast by the paradoxical family whose acquaintance he had made on terms of each forbidding intimacy, did not include the girl who had frankly provoked his confidence and severely snubbed it. He had left her brother very sea-sick in their state-room, and her mother was reported by her father to be feeling the motion too much to venture out. The judge was, in fact, the only person at table when Breckon sat down; but when he had accounted for his wife's absence, and confessed that he did not believe either of his daughters was coming, Ellen gainsaid him by appearing and advancing quite steadily along the saloon to the place beside him. It had not gone so far as this in the judge's experience of a neurotic invalid without his learning to ask her no questions about herself. He had always a hard task in refraining, but he had grown able to refrain, and now he merely looked unobtrusively glad to see her, and asked her where Lottie was.

"Oh, she doesn't want any breakfast, she says. Is momma sick, too?

Where's Boyne?"