In a Steamer Chair | Page 6

I suppose you rank me among your enemies?"
"You forget that I have known you for a day only."
"That is true, chronologically speaking. But you must remember a day
on shipboard is very much longer than a day on shore. In fact, I look on
you now as an old acquaintance, and I should be sorry to think you
looked on me as an enemy."
"You are mistaken. I do not. I look on you now as you do on your own
age--sort of between the two."
"And which way do you think I shall drift? Towards the enemy line, or
towards the line of friendship?"
"I am sure I cannot tell."
"Well, Miss Earle, I am going to use my best endeavours to reach the
friendship line, which I shall make unless the current is too strong for
me. I hope you are not so prejudiced against me that the pleasant effort
will be fruitless."

"Oh, I am strictly neutral," said the young lady. "Besides, it really
amounts to nothing. Steamer friendships are the most evanescent things
on earth."
"Not on earth, surely, Miss Earle. You must mean on sea."
"Well, the earth includes the sea, you know."
"Have you had experience with steamer friendships? I thought,
somehow, this was your first voyage."
"What made you think so?"
"Well, I don't know. I thought it was, that's all."
"I hope there is nothing in my manner that would induce a stranger to
think I am a verdant traveller."
"Oh, not at all. You know, a person somehow classifies a person's
fellow-passengers. Some appear to have been crossing the ocean all
their lives, whereas, in fact, they are probably on shipboard for the first
time. Have you crossed the ocean before?"
"Yes."
"Now, tell me whether you think I ever crossed before?"
"Why, of course you have. I should say that you cross probably once a
year. Maybe oftener."
"Really? For business or pleasure?"
"Oh, business, entirely. You did not look yesterday as if you ever had
any pleasure in your life."
"Oh, yesterday! Don't let us talk about yesterday. It's to-day now, you
know. You seem to be a mind-reader. Perhaps you could tell my
occupation?"

"Certainly. Your occupation is doubtless that of a junior partner in a
prosperous New York house. You go over to Europe every
year--perhaps twice a year, to look after the interests of your business."
"You think I am a sort of commercial traveller, then?"
"Well, practically, yes. The older members of the firm, I should
imagine, are too comfortably situated, and care too little for the
pleasures of foreign travel, to devote much of their time to it. So what
foreign travel there is to be done falls on the shoulders of the younger
partner. Am I correct?"
"Well, I don't quite class myself as a commercial traveller, you know,
but in the main you are--in fact, you are remarkably near right. I think
you must be something of a mind-reader, as I said before, Miss Earle,
or is it possible that I carry my business so plainly in my demeanour as
all that?"
Miss Earle laughed. It was a very bright, pleasant, cheerful laugh.
"Still, I must correct you where you are wrong, for fear you become too
conceited altogether about your powers of observation. I have not
crossed the ocean as often as you seem to think. In the future I shall
perhaps do so frequently. I am the junior partner, as you say, but have
not been a partner long. In fact I am now on my first voyage in
connection with the new partnership. Now, Miss Earle, let me try a
guess at your occupation."
"You are quite at liberty to guess at it."
"But will you tell me if I guess correctly?"
"Yes. I have no desire to conceal it."
"Then, I should say off-hand that you are a teacher, and are now taking
a vacation in Europe. Am I right?"
"Tell me first why you think so?"

"I am afraid to tell you. I do not want to drift towards the line of
enmity."
"You need have no fear. I have every respect for a man who tells the
truth when he has to."
"Well, I think a school teacher is very apt to get into a certain
dictatorial habit of speech. School teachers are something like military
men. They are accustomed to implicit obedience without question, and
this, I think, affects their manner with other people."
"You think I am dictatorial, then?"
"Well, I shouldn't say that you were dictatorial exactly. But there is a
certain confidence--I don't know just how to express it, but it seems to
me, you know--well, I am going deeper and deeper into trouble by what
I am saying, so really I shall