man felt the motion of the vessel
too much to be able to do more than lie out on deck in her steamer-chair.
The Little Colonel, while she was not at all seasick, was afraid to
attempt writing until she reached land.

"The table jiggles so!" she complained, when she sat down at a desk in the
ship's library. "I'm afraid that I'll spoil the page. You write it, Papa
Jack." She put back the pen, and stood at his elbow while he wrote.

"Put down about all the steamah lettahs that we got," she suggested, "and
the little Japanese stove Allison Walton sent me for my muff, and the
books Rob sent. Oh, yes! And the captain's name and how long the ship is,
and how many tons of things to eat they have on board. Mom Beck won't
believe me when I tell her, unless I can show it to her in black and
white."

After they had explored the vessel together, her father was ready to
settle down in his deck-chair in a sheltered corner, and read aloud or
sleep. But the Little Colonel grew tired of being wrapped like a mummy in
her steamer rug. She did not care to read long at a time, and she grew
tired of looking at nothing but water. Soon she began walking up and down
the deck, looking for something to entertain her. In one place some little
girls were busy with scissors and paint-boxes, making paper dolls. Farther
along two boys were playing checkers, and, under the stairs, a group of
children, gathered around their governess, were listening to a fairy tale.
Lloyd longed to join them, for she fairly ached for some amusement. She
paused an instant, with her hand on the rail, as she heard one sentence:
"And the white prince, clasping the crystal ball, waved his plumed cap to
the gnome, and vanished."

Wondering what the story was about, Lloyd walked around to the other side
of the deck, only to find another long uninteresting row of sleepy figures
stretched out in steamer-chairs, and half hidden in rugs and cloaks. She
turned to go back, but paused as she caught sight of a girl, about her own
age, standing against the deck railing, looking over into the sea. She was
not a pretty girl. Her face was too dark and thin, according to Lloyd's
standard of beauty, and her mouth looked as if it were used to saying
disagreeable things.

But Lloyd thought her interesting, and admired the scarlet jacket she
wore, with its gilt braid and buttons, and the scarlet cap that made her
long plaits of hair look black as a crow's wing by contrast. Her hair was
pre