Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/89

 'My bed, I think.' I turned, and there was a figure, evidently a man's, clad in a bath-towel dressing-gown, standing beside me. Imagine my horror!

'My bed, I think,' he repeated.

'Oh no,' I said timidly but confidently. 'I'm sure it's mine. The second from the cabin door.'

'Well, it's my rug, anyway,' was the laconic reply. I looked down, and there, neatly folded beside the bed, was a rug that certainly wasn't mine. I suddenly realised what had happened: this must be the port side. With a muffled apology and my head ducked down I scrambled out and fled. Fortunately, I congratulated myself, it was much too dark to be recognised, and no one, I thought, had even seen me except the owner of bed number two on the port side. I hadn't identified him by his voice, which didn't seem at all familiar, and I could only trust that he hadn't recognised me. I thought he was probably one of the crowd of uninteresting men on board whom I had never spoken to. I consoled myself with these thoughts as I got into my own bed number two on the starboard side. Of course, next morning the story was all over the ship. Anything is welcome to relieve the monotony of life on board, and this, with a few exaggerations that soon got tacked on, made quite a good story. But no one knew who the lady was who had trespassed on the port side. Speculation was rife. I sat and trembled, but expressed the greatest interest and curiosity, like everybody else.