Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/231

Rh The American reviewed, with a share in their gay satisfaction, the fair serried Saxons and Angles—British and American—who passed and repassed him in their morning promenade.

He started forward!

"Miss Varris! Why—Miss Varris!" he cried in his delighted astonishment.

"Mr. Preston! Well—Prisoner!" The girl's familiar, teasing voice, after her first surprise, laughed at the young American behind the Englishman's back.

"Liberator!" young Preston found himself rejoining as naturally and easily, in the bantering tone of their old companionship into which the single amused, mocking word of the girl had at once re-admitted him. "Jove!" he cried joyfully, as he fully realized the meaning to him of her presence on board ship again in the easy spirit of their former friendship. "But it is impossibly good to believe that you are here! And really, Miss Varris, it is most alarming to me, and surely must be to Mr. 207