Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/219

 no more prowling alone at night. That goes. Now you toddle along to your bunk. I'm going for a wash-up. Gee! When I think of what I'm going to do to that cake of soap! I'll have the doc fix the cut."

"I still don't understand how you got here."

"Well, I'll tell you how the day you tell me what I've got that scholars haven't"; and before she could frame a reply he had disappeared into the companionway.

After the bath the doctor took six stitches in the cut and ordered William to stay in his berth until late in the afternoon. So when he came on deck at tea-time the Ajax was well down into the Red Sea. He was mildly disappointed, and he complained to Ruth over their tea-cups. There was no change in the color of the water. It might have been different in Biblical times, but there was no license for calling it red in the year nineteen-twelve. All this nonsense cheered Ruth. Apparently nothing could crush or depress the dynamic spirit of this adopted brother of hers, To be able to joke after all he had gone through!

She pondered over the whimsy of fate that had brought William's path parallel and adjacent to her own. A beautiful natural friendship like this, to bud and blossom out of a pair of shoes, her own, flitting day by day past his cellar window! It read like a fairy-story. A beautiful friendship because it was based upon protection and confidence, the very keystone of friendship.

Scarcely half a dozen passengers had heard of