Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/73

 laughed and gone to get him a book; all in half an hour. Nothing had ever happened in books quite like this. The shipwreck and desert island weren't so far away as might be.

"And a homely mug like me!"

Romance and magic carpets! William was now absolutely certain that she was the rich man's daughter flying the mesh of the unfavored suitor. She was no runaway wife; that idea was totally wrong. He mapped it all out. She had run away and gone bravely to work rather than marry the man who was not her choice. No doubt there was a Handsome-Is somewhere in the background, but she had evidently slipped through his fingers. She couldn't laugh like that if she hadn't. Oh, he knew all about it. Good-looking young women, fighting their own way, seldom escaped that sordid adventure. Somewhere along the route they poked their pretty fingers into the web of the spider just to see him wriggle, and some of them got caught.

A rich man's daughter, running away because she loved her independence; a very agreeable fabric as William wove it on the loom of his fancy. Glory to the day he had stepped into Cook's!

A shadow fell athwart the deck, causing him to turn. The shadow belonged to the deck steward. The dapper little man in uniform scribbled on a card, which he slipped into the metal slide at the top of William's chair. On that card was written, "Mr. Grogan." William handed a silver dollar to the steward.