Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/51

 "What's the matter Robbie?" I asked, without opening my eyes.

"Who is 'oo?" repeated my boy persistently; and, looking up, I saw that he was staring at the cabin door.

"She's gone now," he said; "but, Muzzie, it was a little girl; and this is our cabin, not hers. Why did she come in?"

"Don't be cross about it, dear," I said. "I daresay she's a very nice little girl; and when the sea's quite smooth again, perhaps you will play with her on deck." I naturally thought no more of this trifling incident at the time, but, when we were out of the Bay and the ship was speeding steadily through calm seas, I went down to my cabin in search of a forgotten book and found an intruder there. But such a pretty little intruder that I stopped for a moment to watch her, for there on the upper berth, in a full blaze of sunlight from the open port, sat a little girl. A blue-eyed, yellow-haired, round-faced child who seemed to be about four years old. As I came in she sprang up and stood looking at me with a mischievous smile. "What are you doing here, dear?" I said.

I spoke kindly, but with a little peal of laughter the child fled past me into the saloon, and I heard the quick patter of her feet as she ran laughing down it.

Robbie was on deck; but I concluded without asking him that this must be the little girl whom he had seen before in the cabin.

When I went up the "companion" I looked about the deck for her, intending to ask whose child she was, but she was nowhere to be seen.

The next morning I was aroused by a very impish laugh, and looking up saw, to my great surprise, the child's pretty yellow head peeping over the edge of the upper berth, while Robbie was quietly sleeping in the lower one. Seeing that I was watching her, she climbed carefully down from her perch, which was a work of time and difficulty, and hurried out of the cabin. I was rather vexed. It was tiresome to have this child coming in at all hours. Who could take care of her and allow her to wander about in the early morning, only wearing her little night-gown and with bare feet? Her mother or nurse must be culpably careless; it was almost my duty to speak about it.

Several days went by, but though I saw the child constantly I never succeeded in calling anyone's attention to her. She was as