They require an awful sight of looking after, but
sometimes their instincts are as good as our judgments. Faith is a
little woman with her mother's own purity. How she used to worry for
fear I should grow hard and wicked in my rough life. Ah! my Helen,
wherever you are, to-night, know that I am trying to keep myself
steering straight for the Port that you have reached--and, God helping
me, I will bring the babies safe along, too!"
He bowed his head on his hands a minute, and the old steersman,
watching him, thought, with affectionate sympathy.
"The capt'n's tired to-night, and no wonder. Wish he'd turn in and get
a good rest for once, Never saw a man so faithful, bless him! Glad
he's got them nice little girls to make him brace up these
days--sometimes I think as he's getting old too fast."
The next morning the twins were late in rising only to find it a
summer's day, apparently, so balmy indeed that the deck seemed to be
blossoming out into a flower-bed, as group after group of ladies
appeared in gay lawns and organdies, while all the Mohammedan helpers
were busy stretching double awnings where there had been single ones,
or none at all, and rigging up the punkahs in the saloons. These odd
fans, which England has borrowed, name and all, from her East Indian
colonies, were, on the "International," tricolored (red, white, and
blue) strips of cloth, stretched over light wire frames of a
rectangular shape, which were attached to the ceiling and also, by
means of a long rope, to a black-eyed Bengali boy who sat just outside
the door, on deck, and kept them waving by a slow, constant jerk and
pull, which was so regular that Faith declared the boy slept half the
time, and possibly she was right.
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