The Honorable Percival | Page 8

damp, was hanging about her shoulders, and she carried a bundle of bath-towels under her arm.]
"I--I--beg your pardon," said Percival.
"What for?" she asked.
"For--for not recognizing you the other day." It was not in the least what he had meant to say, but it was said, and he must go on as best he could. "Not expecting to see you, you know, and all that."
She stood shaking her hair in the breeze and smiling. While she evidently bore no resentment, she was not helping him out in his apology.
"One sees so many faces in traveling," he went on lamely, "and all so much alike."
"I'd have known your face anywhere," she said.
He took a step downward, but she did not move. Instead she leaned nonchalantly against the wall and began braiding her hair.
"I know your name, too," she said, with a look half daring and half quizzical. "I looked you up on the passenger-list."
"But how did you know--"
"Oh, it was easy to spot you. You were the only man on board who would fit 'The Honorable Percival Hascombe and Valet.'"
Percival found her scoffing tone intolerable. He descended two more steps, but she stopped him with a request.
"If you don't mind," she said, flinging the finished braid over her shoulder, "I wish you'd write your grand name on my Panama hat sometime; it's going to be a souvenir of the trip."
With an unintelligible answer, he made his escape. His worst fears were realized: he had given an inch; she had taken an ell. The crack in the shell of his privacy was widening alarmingly and peeping through, he shuddered at what he saw.

IV
COUNTER-CURRENTS
Day after day the steamship Saluria sailed the most amiable of seas. So clear was the atmosphere at times that a glimpse could be had of the planet Venus disporting herself in the heavens at high noon. Life on shipboard became permeated with that spirit of fellowship which is apt to make itself felt the moment the restraints of convention are lifted. Even the Honorable Percival succumbed in a measure to the insidious charm of the long, lazy days that were punctuated only by the ship's bells.
He was still an apparently indifferent spectator of all that was going on, but the fact that he was a spectator showed that he was relaxing the rigid rules he had laid down for himself. The only person who addressed him during the day was Bobby Boynton, who gave him a free and easy greeting when they met in the morning, and then seemed to forget his existence. His fear that she would follow up the conversation begun in the companionway was apparently groundless, for she seemed ridiculously engrossed in other things.
Among the half-dozen young people on board who were perpetually organizing tournaments, dances, card-parties, and concerts, she was the most indefatigable. Not being responsible to any one for her actions, and possessing a creative imagination, she indulged in escapades that provided the older people with their chief topic of conversation. Her sternest critics, however, smiled as they shook their heads.
The captain from the first had treated her very much as he treated the other passengers. The parental r?le was not a familiar one, and he shirked it. The only time that he rose to a sense of duty was when he found her in the writing-room, her head bent over a desk. Then rumor said authority was bruskly asserted, letters were confiscated, and tears flowed instead of ink.
About the time the Honorable Percival was congratulating himself on having put her in her proper place, and having kept her there, his confidence received a shock. Coming on deck one day, he found her again seated in his steamer-chair. This time she made no pretense of rising, but obligingly made a place for him on the foot-rest. The invitation was loftily declined.
"I've been waiting a coon's age for you," she said, with an audacious upward glance. "I wanted to tell you that I've put you on the program for a song at the concert to-morrow night."
"Quite impossible; I shouldn't think of such a thing for a moment," he began; then curiosity got the better of his annoyance. "But if I may ask, how on earth did you know that I sang?"
Bobby's eyes danced, and her submerged dimple came to the surface.
"I didn't," she said; "but they dared me to ask you, and I wouldn't take a dare, would you?"
"I am afraid I don't quite follow you," said Percival.
"Well, you see," explained Bobby, "they dared me to ask you, and I didn't mind, because I was dead sure you sang. A person ought to be able to do anything with a voice like yours."
Percival stroked his small mustache meditatively.
"As a matter of fact, you know," he said in a tone from which the chill had vanished, "I