said Hugh.

"Good evening," twittered Ramsey.

"Good evening, Miss Ramsey. Be back this way, Hugh?"

"In a moment, sir." They passed on. Ramsey looked behind at the
Californian.

"What does he want to know about me?" she asked.

"He says," said Hugh, "he's nursed this sickness at sea and at Panama
and hasn't the slightest fear of it."

"Humph!... That's not about me."

"Yes, it--was. He's taken a great fancy----"

"To Basile."

"To several of us, including Basile."

"Yes, because he and Basile played cards together."

"Not entirely for that," said Hugh, looking at her so squarely that she
had to smooth back her curls. "But he'd like to help take care of him if
you--and your mother, of course--are willing."

"Oh, how good--and brave! And he wants to ask me?"

"No, he's too bashful. I'm asking for him."

"Too--!" Ramsey pondered. They stepped more slowly. The other pair
turned back; the play demanded Mrs. Gilmore. The sick-room door was so
near that Ramsey knew her mother was inside it, by her shadow on its
glass. Suddenly, just as Hugh was about to say she need not hurry
in--whereupon she would have vanished like a light blown out--she faced
him. "D'you ever suffer from bashfulness--diffidence?"

He answered on a droll, deep note: "All its horrors."

She looked him over. He barely smiled.

"You never show it," she said.

"No." To the fanciful girl the monosyllable came like one toll from a
low tower. She laughed.

"Basile says there's another thing you suffer from."

"'Suffer'? From what do I 'suffer'?"

"From everybody else on the boat having a better chance to do
things--big things--than you have."

He smiled again. "If I did, no one should know it; least of all you."

She ignored the last clause. "Aha! I said so. I told him--and mammy Joy
told him--there's nothing bigger than to wait your turn and _then take
it_. And there ain't--there isn't, is there?"

"Well--even that can be small. Nothing a man is big enough for looks big
to him."

"Hoh!--after he's done it," laughed Ramsey.

"True--" said Hugh reflectively, "or suffered it," and both of them
began to see that we can rarely lift more than our one corner of the
whole truth at a time. "In your way," he added, still musing, "you're
larger than I."

"Oh, I'm no--such--thing!" Her speech was soft, yet she looked up warily
to Watson's pilot-house window, but Watson too thoroughly approved to be
looking down. "I'm not half or third or