moment at the threshold. She looked round over her shoulder and discovered Burnamy, where he stood hesitating at the head of the passage. She ebbed before him, and then flowed round him in her instant escape; with some murmured incoherencies about speaking to her father, she vanished in a corridor on the other side of the ship, while he stood staring into the doorway of his room.
He had seen that she was the young lady for whom he had come to put on his enamelled shoes, and he saw that the person within was the elderly gentleman who had sat next her at breakfast. He begged his pardon, as he entered, and said he hoped he should not disturb him. "I'm afraid I left my things all over the place, when I got up this morning."
The other entreated him not to mention it and went on taking from his hand-bag a variety of toilet appliances which the sight of made Burnamy vow to keep his own simple combs and brushes shut in his valise all the way over. "You slept on board, then," he suggested, arresting himself with a pair of low shoes in his hand; he decided to put them in a certain pocket of his steamer bag.
"Oh, yes," Burnamy laughed, nervously: "I came near oversleeping, and getting off to sea without knowing it; and I rushed out to save myself, and so—"
He began to gather up his belongings while he followed the movements of Mr. Triscoe with a wistful eye. He would have liked to offer his lower berth to this senior of his, when he saw him arranging to take possession of the upper; but he did not quite know how to manage it. He noticed that as the other moved about he limped slightly, unless it were rather a weary easing of his person from one limb to the other. He stooped to pull his trunk out from under the berth, and Burnamy sprang to help him.
"Let me get that out for you!" He caught it up and put it on the sofa under the port. "Is that where you want it?"
"Why, yes," the other assented. "You're very good," and as he took out his key to unlock the trunk he relented a little farther to the intimacies of the situation. "Have you arranged with the bath-steward yet? It's such a full boat."
"No, I haven't," said Burnamy, as if he had tried and failed; till then he had not known that there was a bath-steward. "Shall I get him for you?"
"No; no. Our bedroom-steward will send him, I dare say, thank you."
Mr. Triscoe had got his trunk open, and Burnamy had no longer an excuse for lingering. In his defeat concerning the bath-steward, as he felt it to be, he had not the courage, now, to offer the lower berth. He went away, forgetting to change his shoes; but he came back, and as soon as he got the enamelled shoes on, and shut the shabby russet pair in his bag, he said, abruptly: "Mr. Triscoe, I wish you'd take the lower berth. I got it at the eleventh hour by some fellow's giving it up, and it isn't as if I'd bargained for it a month ago."
The elder man gave him one of his staccato glances in which Burnamy fancied suspicion and even resentment. But he said, after the moment of reflection which he gave himself, "Why, thank you, if you don't mind, really."
"Not at all!" cried the young man. "I should like the upper berth better.
We'll, have the steward change the sheets."
"Oh, I'll see that he does that," said Mr. Triscoe. "I couldn't allow you to take any trouble about it." He now looked as if he wished Burnamy would go, and leave him to his domestic arrangements.
X.
In telling about himself Burnamy touched only upon the points which he believed would take his listener's intelligent fancy, and he stopped so long before he had tired him that March said he would like to introduce him to his wife. He saw in the agreeable young fellow an image of his own youth, with some differences which, he was willing to own, were to the young fellow's advantage. But they were both from the middle West; in their native accent and their local tradition they were the same; they were the same in their aspirations; they were of one blood in their literary impulse to externate their thoughts and emotions.
Burnamy answered, with a glance at his enamelled shoes, that he would be delighted, and when her husband brought him up to her, Mrs. March said she was always glad to meet the contributors to the magazine, and asked him whether he knew Mr. Kendricks, who was her favorite. Without giving him time to reply to a question that seemed to depress him, she said that she had a son who must be nearly his own age, and whom his father had left in charge of 'Every Other Week' for the few months they were to be gone; that they had a daughter married and living in Chicago. She made him sit down by her in March's chair, and before he left them March heard him magnanimously asking whether Mr. Kendricks was going to do something more for the magazine soon. He sauntered away and did not know how quickly Burnamy left this question to say, with the laugh and blush which became him in her eyes:
"Mrs. March, there is something I should like to tell you about, if you will let me."
"Why, certainly, Mr. Burnamy," she began, but she saw that he did not wish her to continue.
"Because," he went on, "it's a little matter that I shouldn't like to go wrong in."
He told her of his having overheard what Miss Triscoe had said to her father, and his belief that she was talking about the lower berth. He said he would have wished to offer it, of course, but now he was afraid they might think he had overheard them and felt obliged to do it.
"I see," said Mrs. March, and she added, thoughtfully, "She looks like rather a proud girl."
"Yes," the young fellow sighed.
"She is very charming," she continued, thoughtfully, but not so judicially.
"Well," Burnamy owned, "that is certainly one of the complications," and they laughed together.
She stopped herself after saying, "I see what you mean," and suggested,
"I think I should be guided by circumstances. It needn't be done at once,
I suppose."
"Well," Burnamy began, and then he broke out, with a laugh of embarrassment, "I've done it already."
"Oh! Then it wasn't my advice, exactly, that you wanted."
"No!"
"And how did he take it?"
"He said he should be glad to make the exchange if I really didn't mind." Burnamy had risen restlessly, and she did not ask him to stay. She merely said:
"Oh, well, I'm glad it turned out so nicely."
"I'm so glad you think it was the thing to do." He managed to laugh again, but he could not hide from her that he was not feeling altogether satisfied. "Would you like me to send Mr. March, if I see him?" he asked, as if he did not know on what other terms to get away.
"Do, please!" she entreated, and it seemed to her that he had hardly left her when her husband came up. "Why, where in the world did he find you so soon?"
"Did you send him for me? I was just hanging round for him to go." March sank into the chair at her side. "Well, is he going to marry her?"
"Oh, you may laugh! But there is something very exciting!" She told him what had happened, and of her belief that Burnamy's handsome behavior had somehow not been met in kind.
March
