Page:My Life and Loves.djvu/113

Rh "the fresh air will soon blow the sick feeling away. You'll sleep like a top and tomorrow morning you'll he alright. Will you come?" She consented readily and in ten minutes admitted that the slight nausea had disappeared in the sharp breeze. As we walked up and down the dimly lighted deck I had now and then to support her, for the ship was rolling a little under a sou-wester. Jessie told me something about herself; how she was going to New York to spend some months with an elder married sister and how strict her father was. In return she had my whole story and could hardly believe I was only sixteen. Why she was over sixteen, and she could never have stood up and recited piece after piece as I did in the Cabin: she thought it "wonderful".

Before she went down, I told her she was the prettiest girl on board and she kissed me and promised to come up the next evening and have another walk. "If you've nothing better to do", she said at parting, "you might come forward to the little Promenade Deck of the Second Cabin and I'll get one of the men to arrange a seat in one of the boats for us". "Of course", I promised gladly and spent the next afternoon with Jessie in the stern-sheets of the great launch where we were out of sight of everyone, and out of hearing as well.

There we were, tucked in with two rugs and cradled, so to speak, between sea and sky, while the keen air whistling past increased our sense of solitude. Jessie, though rather short, was a very pretty girl with large hazel eyes and fair complexion.

I soon got my arm round her and kept kissing her till she told me she had never known a man so greedy of kisses as I was. It was delicious flattery to me to speak of me as a man and in return I raved about her eyes and mouth and form; caressing her