A steward gave him tea, and asked feelingly "how he was keeping?" A quarter-master came over to him and inquired, "All right, this morning, after your swim?" The third officer, very busy with landing preparations, tossed him a greeting across the deck, and asked if he thought the water would be nice for bathing. Dick began to feel rather hot, and moved away to another part of the deck, where there might be people who had failed to notice yesterday's adventure. There, however, he met the captain, who patted him on the head, and said, "Good kid; where did you pick up high diving?" and just after he had escaped from this encounter, who should come along, stately and tall, but the Bishop's wife, who made a kind of run at him, grasped his hands, and said, "My child, how can we express our feelings of gratitude and admiration?" which so terrified Dick that he broke away without ceremony, and, muttering something incoherent, fled as he would never have fled from the most infuriated bullock. He went round a deck house at a run, and cannoned into Merle Warner, who scowled and said, exactly as she had said on the first morning at sea, "Can't you look where you're going, silly?"
"'Cause it sounded quite decent. Everybody else on this blessed ship is talking such bosh!"
"Oh, nothing," he said. There was a moment's pause, and then Merle flushed in her turn.
"I say--thanks for goin' in after Bobby," she said awkwardly.
"Oh, you, too!" he cried. "I say, do chuck it. If you knew how sick I am of hearing about it!"
"Oh, all right," said Merle, plainly comprehending this point of view, and relieved to find that no more politeness was expected of her. Somewhat to her surprise, however, she found herself making further conversation:
"Oh, rather!" Dick's face suddenly lit up. "I like the ship--but I'm awfully keen to see father."
"Mine, of course. He's coming out from England--we're going to meet him at Fremantle."
"Oh, I didn't know," Merle said. "Has he been long away?
"Over a year," Dick said. "Seems about ten."
"A year!" Merle's eyes grew round. Life without a father seemed an impossible thing.
"'M," Dick nodded. "It's been jolly nice to be with your father on this ship. A fellow misses his father a bit, I can tell you."