Little Miss Grouch | Page 6

help but--"
At this moment a drunken stagger on the part of the ship slewed the speaker halfway around. He found himself looking down upon a steamer-chair, wherein lay a bundle swathed in many rugs. From that bundle protruded a veiled face and the outline of a swollen nose, above which a pair of fixed eyes blazed, dimmed but malevolent, into his.
"Er--ah--oh," said the Tyro, moving hastily away. "If you'll excuse me I think I'll just step over the rail and speak to a fish I used to know."
"What's the matter?" inquired Alderson suspiciously, following him. "Not already!"
"Oh, no. Not that. Worse. That bundle almost under our feet when I spoke--that was Little Miss Grouch."
Alderson took a furtive glance. "She's all mummied up," he suggested; "maybe she didn't hear."
"Oh, yes, she did. Trust my luck for that. And I said she was homely. And she is. Oh, Lord, I wouldn't have hurt her poor little feelings for anything."
"Don't you be too sure about her being so homely. Any woman looks a fright when she's all bunged up from crying."
"What's the difference?" said the Tyro miserably. "A pretty girl don't like to be called homely any more than a homely one."
"There's where you're off, my son," returned Alderson. "She can summon her looking-glass as a witness in rebuttal."
"Anyway, I've put my foot in it up to the knee!"
"Oh, go up to-morrow when she's feeling better and tell her you were talking about the ship's cat."
"I'd show better sense by keeping out of her way altogether."
"You'll never be able to do that," said the sea-wise Alderson. "Try to avoid any one on shipboard and you'll bump into that particular person everywhere you go, from the engine-room to the forepeak. Ten to one she sits next to you at table."
"I'll have my seat changed," cried the other in panic. "I'll eat in my cabin. I'll fast for the week."
"You be a game sport and I'll help you out," promised his friend. "All hands to repel boarders! Here she comes!"
Little Miss Grouch bore down upon them with her much-maligned nose in the air. As she maneuvered to pass, the ship, which had reached the climax of its normal roll to port, paused, and then decided to go a couple of degrees farther; in consequence of which the young lady fled with a stifled cry of fury straight into the Tyro's waiting arms. Alderson, true to his promise, extracted her, set her on her way, and turned anxiously to his young friend.
"Did she bite you?" he inquired solicitously.
"No. You grabbed her just in time. This affair," he continued with profound and wretched conviction, "is going to be Fate with a capital F."
Meantime, in the seclusion of her cabin, the little lady was maturing the plot of deep and righteous wrath. "Wait till to-morrow," she muttered, hurling her apparel from her and diving into her bunk. "I'll show him," she added, giving the pillow a vicious poke. "He said I was homely! (Thump!) And red-nosed. (Plop!) And cross and ugly! (Whack!) And he called me Little Miss Grouch. And--and gribble him!" pursued the maligned one, employing the dreadful anathema of her schoolgirl days. "He pitied me. Pitied! Me! Just wait. I'll be seasick and have it over with! And I'll cry until I haven't got another tear left. And then I'll fix him. He's got nice, clear gray eyes, too," concluded the little ogress with tigerish satisfaction. "Ouch! where's the bell!"
For several hours Little Miss Grouch carried out her programme faithfully and at some pains. Then there came to her the fairy godmother, Sleep, who banished the goblins, Grief and Temper, and worked her own marvelous witchery upon the weary girl to such fair purpose that she awoke in the morning transformed beyond all human, and more particularly all masculine, believing. One look in her glass assured her that the unfailing charm had worked.
She girded up her hair and went forth upon the war-path of her sex.

II
Second day out. A good deal of weather of one kind and another. Might be called a what-next sort of day. I think I am going to like this old ocean pretty well.
SMITH'S LOG.
Where beauty is not, constancy is not. This perspicuous proverb from the Persian (which I made up myself for the occasion) is cited in mitigation of the Tyro's regrettable fickleness, he--to his shame be it chronicled--having practically forgotten the woe-begone damsel's very existence within eighteen short hours after his adventure in knight-errantry. Her tear-ravaged and untidy plainness had, in that brief time, been exorcised from memory by a more potent interest, that of Beauty on her imperial throne. Setting forth the facts in their due order, it befell in this wise:--
At or about one bell, to be quite nautical, the Tyro awoke from a somewhat agitated sleep.
"Hold on