“If you are not feeling quite the thing, sir,” said the valet, solicitously, “shall I serve your dinner on deck, sir?”

Instantly Percival rose.

“By no means,” he said coldly.  “Get me a sherry and bitters.  I’ll dress at once.”

Proud indifference to every passing sensation was manifest in each detail of his careful toilet when he took his place at the captain’s table some twenty minutes later.  With a haughty inclination of the head, he seated himself and, apparently unaware of the glances cast upon him, devoted himself to an absorbed perusal of the menu.  He was quite used to being looked at; in fact, he suffered the admiration of the public with noble tolerance:  only it must keep its distance; he could have no presuming.

On his arrival the conversation suffered a sudden chill; but the captain, who knew the signs of approaching icebergs, soon steered the talk back into warm waters.  It was evident that the captain was in the habit of occupying the center of the stage, a fact which should have gratified Percival, inasmuch as it focused attention at the far end of the table.  Strange to say, he was not gratified.  He conceived an immediate dislike for the large, good-looking officer, who seemed built especially to show off his smart uniform, and who brazenly ignored all conventions save those of navigation, His peculiarities of speech, which at another time might have gratified Percival and confirmed the report he was bearing back to England that Americans were, if possible, more obnoxious at home than abroad, now jarred upon him grievously.  He found it difficult to follow the story that was causing the present merriment.

“And when my Nelson eye discovered,” the captain was concluding, “that Ah Foo was perambulating an affair in Shanghai, I summoned the slave and asked him if his mind was set on becoming festooned in matrimony.  He thought it was.  So I up and bought the damsel for him, paid one hundred Mex. for her, and, if you’ll believe me, haven’t had a dime’s worth of work out of Ah Foo since!”

Percival found himself on the dry beach of non-comprehension when the tide of laughter followed the receding story,

“A cup of very strong tea and dry toast,” he said over his shoulder to the waiting Chinaman.

As his eyes returned to the study of the menu, he was for the first time aware that the objectionable young person, with a glitter of rhinestones in her hair, was sitting next the captain, giving him story for story, and laughing much more than the occasion seemed to Percival to warrant.  He particularly disliked to hear a woman laugh aloud in public, and he was vexed with himself that he looked up every time her laugh rang out.  To be sure, she was well worth looking at.  Despite the clashing colors of her costume, he could not deny the charm of her blue eyes and black hair, and of the red lips whose only fault was that they smiled too much.  It was her dress, her freedom, her unrestrained gaiety that offended Percival.  In England a girl of her age would still be a trembling bud, modestly hiding behind a mass of elderly foliage.