Page:Wiggin--Ladies-in-waiting.djvu/224

  a surprise. The captain is such a nice man, though a good deal of a tease! Mr. Winthrop was delighted to hear you were not alone. Poor Miss Winthrop has influenza and they both wish they had taken this trip. It seems they are thinking of it just a little.”

“The Winthrops coming on this voyage,” I exclaimed. “Impossible! They had n’t an idea of it.”

“Might n’t he want to interview the governor and look at the island?”

“He has n’t time. I chose this journey instead of another so that I could interview the governor and look at the islands myself.”

“Well, I dare say there’s nothing in it. Duke did n’t speak of it as anything settled, and he may have misunderstood, his mind being on me. May I read you the letter—I mean parts of it?”

“I should n’t expect to hear all of it,” I replied dryly.

“Yet the bits I leave out are the ones that show him as he is,” she said, looking off into the grove of palms. “Duke is so