Nina gave him a faint, “No.” Drawing her now unresisting arm through his own, he walked down the long decks, clean and wet from a recent scrubbing, past the bridge and the portion of the ship allotted to the second cabin passengers. When they came to the steerage quarters, Nina turned away her head to avoid a puff of hot air that swept up the narrow opening. A pale-faced woman with a baby in her arms struggled on deck. She unwittingly crossed the dividing line between her portion of the ship and that belonging to the richer, more favoured class.
Captain Fordyce’s eyes rested on her, and he nodded slightly to one of the ship’s officers who happened to be passing. It did not escape Nina. She saw the woman sent back, and pitied the weary look on her face, as she quietly retraced her steps.
“Please let me speak to her for a moment,” she said to her companion.
He released her, and hurrying back she put her hand in her pocket. There was no money there. She had left her purse in her room. She drew a little gay silk handkerchief from the breast of her coat, and, pressing it between the woman’s thin fingers, told her to twist it around the baby’s neck.
The woman’s white lips murmured a blessing, and, with tears in her eyes, Nina turned toward the prow of the ship. Had she incurred the Grand Turk’s displeasure? and she anxiously scanned his face as he guided her steps over a huge anchor lying on the deck.
It softened perceptibly. “Order must be maintained on a ship, Nina, or everything would run to confusion. We could not have all the different classes of passengers scrambling about together.”
“Of course not, but you might have spoken to that poor woman yourself.”
“That would not be ship etiquette, and, moreover, you must remember that a man who has knocked about the world as much as I have cannot be expected to have the sensibilities of a boarding-school miss.”
“That is no excuse,” she said, rebukingly. “One person is as good as another. You ought to be as kind to that woman as you are to me. Whether you feel like it or not--” Then a thought of her own shortcomings brought her to a sudden stop.
“You little prig, I am not as hard-hearted as you think. I am sorry for that woman, but what can I do? Money it would not be wise to give her, sympathy I cannot express as you did just now. Don’t you see,” eagerly, “that is just what I want you for, or, rather, one of the things I want you for. A kind-hearted, charitable little wife, what a help she would be to me!”