Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/119

Rh "Oh, that's good; I hope she'll like Salisbury," I replied, bundling shirts, collars, and coats into my trunk with indiscriminate vigour.

"Yes, but you don't wait to hear the end," he continued, with a great roar of laughter; "she isn't at Salisbury at all; she's at Plymouth, on board the Celsis. She went straight down there, and devil a bit as much as sent her aunt a telegram!"

I rose up at his word, and looked him in the face.

"Well," he said, "what do you think?—you don't seemed pleased."

"I'm not pleased," I said, going on with my packing. "I don't think she ought to be there."

"I know that; we've talked it all over, but when I think of it, I don't see where the harm comes in; we can't meet mischief crossing the Atlantic, and when the danger does begin in New York I'll see she's well on the lee-side of it."

I did not answer him, for I knew that which he did not know. Perhaps he began to think that he did not do well to treat the matter so lightly, for he was mute when we entered the cab, and he did not open his lips until we were seated in the night mail for Plymouth. The compartment we rode in was reserved for us as he had wished; and, truth to tell, we neither of us had much liking for talk as the train rolled smoothly westward. We had entered