“I thought you must be relations,” said the stewardess.

“We are,” said Anna-Rose.  “We’re twins.”

The stewardess stared.  “Twins what of?” she asked.

“What of?” echoed Anna-Rose.  “Why, of each other, of course.”

“I meant relations of the Captain’s,” said the stewardess shortly, eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.

“You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind,” said
Anna-Felicitas.  “He is no relation of ours.”

“You’re not even friends, then?” asked the stewardess, pausing to stare round at them at a turn in the stairs as they followed her down arm-in-arm.

“Of course we’re friends,” said Anna-Rose with some heat.  “Do you suppose we quarrel?”

“No, I didn’t suppose you quarrelled with the Captain,” said the stewardess tartly.  “Not on board this ship anyway.”

She didn’t know which of the two she disliked most, the short girl or the long girl.

“You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain,” said Anna-Felicitas gently.  “Obsessed!” repeated the stewardess, tossing her head.  She was unacquainted with the word, but instantly suspected it of containing a reflection on her respectability.  “I’ve been a widow off and on for ten years now,” she said angrily, “and I guess it would take more than even the Captain to obsess me.”

They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room, and the stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before indignantly leaving them and going upstairs again to say, “If you’re friends, what do you want to know his name for, then?”

“Whose name?” asked Anna-Felicitas.

“The Captain’s,” said the stewardess.

“We don’t want to know the Captain’s name,” said Anna-Felicitas patiently.  “We don’t want to know anything about the Captain.”

“Then—­” began the stewardess.  She restrained herself, however, and merely bitterly remarking:  “That gentleman was the Captain,” went upstairs and left them.

Anna-Rose was the first to recover.  “You see we took your advice,” she called up after her, trying to soften her heart, for it was evident that for some reason her heart was hardened, by flattery.  “You told us to ask the Captain.”

CHAPTER IV

In their berths that night before they went to sleep, it occurred to them that perhaps what was the matter with the stewardess was that she needed a tip.  At first, with their recent experiences fresh in their minds, they thought that she was probably passionately pro-Ally, and had already detected all those Junkers in their past and accordingly couldn’t endure them.  Then they remembered how Aunt Alice had said, “You will have to give your stewardess a little something.”