Gideons Band | Page 7

his hat and accepted and dropped again the dainty hand proffered him with childish readiness. "Then you're the youngest of seven children."
Her reply was a gay nod. Presently, with a merry glint between her long lashes, she said: "I'm Ramsey."
The captain's smile grew: "That must be great fun."
The girl looked from one to another, puzzled.
"Why, just to be Ramsey," he explained. "Isn't it?"
She gave him a wary, sidewise glance and looked out over the water. "My three married sisters all live near this river," she musingly said; "one in Louisiana, two in Mississippi." Her sidelong glance repeated itself: "I know who it would be fun to be--for me--or for anybody!" Her eyes widened as her brother's had done, though in an amiable, elated way.
"Your father?" asked the captain.
She all but danced: "How'd you know?"
"I saw him--in your eyes," was the placid reply. "Your father and I, and your grandfather Hayle, and this gentleman here----"
"Ya-ass, ya-ass!" drawled the nurse in worshipping reminiscence, and Ramsey laughed to Hugh, and all the while the captain persisted: "We've built and owned rival boats----"
"Fawty yeah'!" murmured the nurse. "Fawty yeah'!"
"Yes, yes!" chirruped the girl. "Pop-a's up the river now, building the Paragon! We're on our way to join him!"
"Law', missy," gently chid the nurse, made anxious by a new approach which Ramsey was trying to ignore, "dese gen'lemens knows all dat."
Ramsey twitched her shoulders and waist. Her lips parted for a bright question, but it was interrupted. The interrupters were the restless twins, whose tread sounded peremptory even on the painted canvas of the deck, and the fineness of whose presence was dimmed only by the hardy lawlessness which, in their own eyes, was their crowning virtue.
"Ramsey," drawled one of them, who somehow seemed the more forceful of the two. He spoke as if amazed at his own self-restraint. She whisked round to him. He made his eyes heavy: "Have you had any proper introduction to these--gentlemen?"
A white-jacket, holding a large hand-bell by its tongue, bowed low before the captain, received a nod, and minced away. With suspended breath the girl stared an instant on her brother, then on the captain, and then on his father; but as her eyes came round to Hugh his solemnity caught her unprepared, and, with every curl shaking, she broke out in a tinkling laugh so straight from the heart, so innocent, and so helpless that even the frightened old woman chuckled. Ramsey wheeled, snatched the nurse round, and hurried her off to a stair, hanging to her arm, tiptoeing, dancing, and carolling in the rhythm of the supper-bell below:
"Ringading tingalingaty, ringadang ding, Ringading tingalingaty, ringadang ding."
Red and dumb, the questioner glared after them until, near one of the great paddle-boxes, they vanished below. But his brother, the one who had the trick of widening his eyes, found words. "Captain Courteney," he said, "by what right does your son--or even do you, sir--take the liberty, on the hurricane-deck of a steamboat, to scrape acquaintance with an unprotec----?"
The captain had turned his back. "Hugh," he affably said, "will you see what these young gentlemen want?" And then to the older man: "Come, father, let's go to supper." They went.

VI
HAYLE'S TWINS
Hugh was grateful for this task in diplomacy, yet wondered what mess he should make of it.
He was here for just such matters, let loose from tutor and books for the summer, to study the handling of a steamboat, one large part of which, of course, was handling the people aboard. Both pilots, up yonder, knew this was his r?le. Already he had tried his unskill--or let "Ramsey" try it--and had learned a point or two. She had shown him, at least twice, what value there might be in a well-timed, unmanageable laugh. But a well-timed, unmanageable laugh is purely a natural gift. If it was to come to his aid, it would have to come of itself. Lucian, the twin who had asked the last question, turned upon him.
Hugh smilingly lifted a pacifying hand. "You're entirely mistaken," he said. "Nobody's tried to scrape acquaintance." In the midst of the last two words, sure enough, there broke from him a laugh which to him seemed so honest, friendly, well justified, and unmanageable that he stood astounded when his accuser blazed with wrath.
"You lie, damn you!" was the answering cry. "And then you laugh in my face! We saw you--all three of you--just now!" The note was so high that one of the pilots began to loiter down from the pilot-house.
Hugh crimsoned. "I see," he said, advancing step by step as the frenzied boy drew back. "You really don't want a peaceable explanation, at all, do you?"
The other twin, Julian, arrested his brother's back step by a touch and spoke for him: "No, sir, we don't. You can't 'peaceably explain' foul treatment,