Part 14 (1/2)
”Say, Jarge,” she whispered coaxingly, ”will you do something for me?”
George looked down at her indulgently. ”Of course I will. Anything you want.”
”Well then, listen, Jarge: Will you take Janet all the way home and be real nice to her and pretend she's your girl and pet her real, real hard. n.o.body ever pets Janet, and she never has a good time except when she's with me. And I'll take Tom Sullivan.”
George laughed a good-natured ”All right,” and Rosie, turning around, said to Janet: ”Jarge don't want me any more, do you, Jarge? He wants you, Janet, don't you, Jarge, want Janet? So will you let Tom Sullivan take me?”
”Oh, Rosie!” Janet threw incredulous eyes to heaven and clutched her hands together in a joy that was serious as grief.
Rosie pushed her up to George and George, capturing her cold fingers, drew them through his arm. Then Rosie, glowing all over in virtuous self-approval, dropped behind with Tom Sullivan.
CHAPTER XII
THE LOAN OF A GENTLEMAN FRIEND
The wives and mothers, with sleepy, crying children, cluttered up the lower decks. The young people by some common instinct seemed all to be drawn to the quiet and moonlight of the upper deck. There Rosie's party found them, a thousand couples more or less, each couple sitting somewhat apart from its neighbours, but frightfully close to itself.
”I suppose they're all engaged,” Rosie remarked to Tom Sullivan, and even in the moonlight Tom blushed furiously.
George and Janet found the unoccupied half of a deck bench, not too far from the rail, and Rosie and Tom seated themselves on campstools some distance behind. They were pretty far in on deck and so could see very little beyond the backs of the great half circle of couples. But backs, in their way, are very expressive, and Rosie soon found herself deeply interested in the romances of which these various backs were soon giving most unmistakable hints. Every couple that sat down seemed to go through precisely the same emotional experience. A properly equipped statistician could soon have reduced the whole thing to a matter of minutes and seconds.
Take what would be an average couple: They seat themselves like ordinary people in their right minds and, for a moment, that is what you suppose they really are. But only for a moment. Although they may be the only couple on the bench, almost immediately you see them crowding against each other as if to make room for a fat lady with a baby. Then to get more room the man drops his arm--the arm next the girl--over the back of the bench, where it lies a few moments lifeless and inert. The position is uncomfortable, evidently, for soon he tries to bring it back. Too late. The invisible fat lady with the baby has, in the meantime, wedged the girl right under the man's shoulder, and his arm and hand, in circling back, circle naturally about her. She, poor little soul, seems not to know what has happened. Her tired head sinks like a weary bird--sinks on his breast. She sleeps. At any rate, she looks like it.
Then she wakes. She wakes gradually. Her profile slowly rises and, as it rises, lo! his descends until--until--Well, you know what always occurs when his profile meets her profile full-face.
Every time they saw it happen, Rosie held her breath for a moment, then murmured: ”They must be engaged, too!”
Tom Sullivan stood it as long as he could, then burst out: ”Aw, go on!
You don't have to be engaged to kiss!”
Rosie looked at him, scandalized and shocked. ”Why, Tom Sullivan, how you talk! You ought to be ashamed o' yourself!”
”Well, you don't!” Tom insisted doggedly.
Rosie, drawing herself away from a person of such free-and-easy morals, returned to the backs of the last couple to see whether their little drama had completed itself. As she looked, the final act opened. The man whispered something--from what happened when all the other men had whispered something, Rosie decided he must be asking the girl if she were chilly. She, like all others before her, presumably was, for the man took off half his coat, the half near her, and drew it around her shoulders. What became of his s.h.i.+rt-sleeved arm, or what, in fact, thereafter became of the rest of both of them, no mere onlooker could ever know. The half-coat, raising high its collar, served as an effectual screen against the gaze of a curious world, and the only thing left for a student of human nature was to hunt a new couple.
One of the marvels of a picnic boat is that there are always new couples. Rosie found one immediately and was already engrossed in it when Tom Sullivan, clutching her excitedly, cried out:
”Look! Look! Didn't I tell you!”
Rosie looked, and what she saw seemed for a moment to make her heart stop. George Riley and Janet McFadden--think of it! How long the exhibit had been going on Rosie knew not, but Tom Sullivan had discovered them just as Janet's profile was rising and George's descending. In another instant----
”There!” shouted Tom Sullivan in triumph. ”Didn't I tell you so! Now you can't say they're engaged!”
Rosie stood up hurriedly.
”This is a perfectly horrid boat and I wish I could get off! And I tell you one thing, Tom Sullivan: I'm going downstairs. I won't stay up here any longer. It's disgraceful, that's what it is!”
”Aw, don't go down!” Tom begged. ”It's fun up here.”