Part 3 (1/2)

”What's the cook's galley?”

”Don't you know? The kitchen.”

”Let me go with you. I should like to see the kitchen.” She trembled with eagerness. Arrived at the door of the narrow pa.s.sage that ran across the deck aft of the forecastle, she looked in and saw, amid a haze of frying and broiling, the short, stocky figure of a negro, bow-legged, and unnaturally erect from the waist up. At sight of Lydia, he made a respectful duck forward with his uncouth body. ”Why, are you the cook?” she almost screamed in response to this obeisance.

”Yes, miss,” said the man, humbly, with a turn of the pleading black eyes of the negro.

Lydia grew more peremptory: ”Why--why--I thought the cook was a woman!”

”Very sorry, miss,” began the negro, with a deprecatory smile, in a slow, mild voice.

Thomas burst into a boy's yelling laugh: ”Well, if that ain't the best joke on Gabriel! He'll never hear the last of it when I tell it to the second officer!”

”Thomas!” cried Lydia, terribly, ”you shall _not_!” She stamped her foot. ”Do you hear me?”

The boy checked his laugh abruptly. ”Yes, ma'am,” he said submissively.

”Well, then!” returned Lydia. She stalked proudly back to the cabin gangway, and descending shut herself into her state-room.

V.

A few hours later Deacon Latham came into the house with a milk-pan full of pease. He set this down on one end of the kitchen table, with his straw hat beside it, and then took a chair at the other end and fell into the att.i.tude of the day before, when he sat in the parlor with Lydia and Miss Maria waiting for the stage; his mouth was puckered to a whistle, and his fingers were held above the board in act to drub it.

Miss Maria turned the pease out on the table, and took the pan into her lap. She sh.e.l.led at the pease in silence, till the sound of their pelting, as they were dropped on the tin, was lost in their mult.i.tude; then she said, with a sharp, querulous, pathetic impatience, ”Well, father, I suppose you're thinkin' about Lyddy.”

”Yes, Maria, I be,” returned her father, with uncommon plumpness, as if here now were something he had made up his mind to stand to. ”I been thinkin' that Lyddy's a woman grown, as you may say.”

”Yes,” admitted Miss Maria, ”she's a woman, as far forth as that goes.

What put it into your head?”

”Well, I d'know as I know. But it's just like this: I got to thinkin'

whether she mightn't get to feelin' rather lonely on the voyage, without any other woman to talk to.”

”I guess,” said Miss Maria, tranquilly, ”she's goin' to feel lonely enough at times, any way, poor thing! But I told her if she wanted advice or help about anything just to go to the stewardess. That Mrs.

Bland that spent the summer at the Parkers' last year was always tellin'

how they went to the stewardess for most everything, and she give her five dollars in gold when they got into Boston. I shouldn't want Lyddy should give so much as that, but I should want she should give something, as long's it's the custom.”

”They don't have 'em on sailin' vessels, Captain Jenness said; they only have 'em on steamers,” said Deacon Latham.

”Have what?” asked Miss Maria, sharply.

”Stewardesses. They've got a cabin-boy.”

Miss Maria desisted a moment from her work; then she answered, with a gruff shortness peculiar to her, ”Well, then, she can go to the cook, I suppose. It wouldn't matter which she went to, I presume.”

Deacon Latham looked up with the air of confessing to sin before the whole congregation. ”The cook's a man,--a black man,” he said.

Miss Maria dropped a handful of pods into the pan, and sent a handful of peas rattling across the table on to the floor. ”Well, who in Time”--the expression was strong, but she used it without hesitation, and was never known to repent it ”_will_ she go to, then?”