Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/57

 possibly believe that the dear little girl who has been going in and out of this cabin is a ghost?"

"Yes, a sort of shadow of the child. I've never seen it, but so many people seem to have done so that I have grown to believe in it."

I was silent, and remembered various things about the child which confirmed the Stewardess's story. I began to feel, against my will, that she had been a phantom. Then I asked what she looked like.

"As pretty a child as you could wish to see—blue eyes and hair like a doll, so yellow and curly, and such a fidgety little thing as she was, flashing about all over the ship; one never knew where she would be next." The Stewardess spoke very calmly. She must have told the story before to ladies who had been as horrified and distressed by this sight as I was. "People who have No. 45 always see little May," she went on; "but they don't often see what you saw. It's no wonder you were frightened. I shall never forget the state Mrs. Rodney was in. I thought she was going to die too."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Well, I naturally don't wish to give one of the cabins a bad name—the Captain wouldn't like it; but whenever I can I advise ladies not to take that cabin. I'd sleep in it myself willingly if I were allowed to, but it's too near the middle of the ship for me to be let have it. I don't think poor little May would ever frighten me. Ah! she was a sweet, pretty child!"

Something very like a tear was in the corner of one of the Stewardess's small yellow eyes—at least, I think so; but my own eyes were so brimming with tears that I could not see clearly.

"How did the child fall out?" I asked; but I felt that I had been an eye-witness of the tragedy, and knew beforehand what the Stewardess was going to say.

"She had been sitting on the sill of the port leaning out of it, and her mother came in and spoke to her suddenly, and she was startled and fell. I was in the ladies' saloon and heard the splash, but I didn't hear her scream. It must have been a very soft stifled little cry."

"Yes, that was just what it was," I said.