“To marry him?  And what will she do with Mr. Porterfield?”

“She’ll ask me just to make it all right to him—­or perhaps you.”

“Yes, as an old friend”—­and for a moment I felt it awkwardly possible.  But I put to her seriously:  “Do you see Jasper caught like that?”

“Well, he’s only a boy—­he’s younger at least than she.”

“Precisely; she regards him as a child.  She remarked to me herself today, that is, that he’s so much younger.”

Mrs. Nettlepoint took this in.  “Does she talk of it with you?  That shows she has a plan, that she has thought it over!”

I’ve sufficiently expressed—­for the interest of my anecdote—­that I found an oddity in one of our young companions, but I was far from judging her capable of laying a trap for the other.  Moreover my reading of Jasper wasn’t in the least that he was catchable—­could be made to do a thing if he didn’t want to do it.  Of course it wasn’t impossible that he might be inclined, that he might take it—­or already have taken it—­into his head to go further with his mother’s charge; but to believe this I should require still more proof than his always being with her.  He wanted at most to “take up with her” for the voyage.  “If you’ve questioned him perhaps you’ve tried to make him feel responsible,” I said to my fellow critic.

“A little, but it’s very difficult.  Interference makes him perverse.  One has to go gently.  Besides, it’s too absurd—­think of her age.  If she can’t take care of herself!” cried Mrs. Nettlepoint.

“Yes, let us keep thinking of her age, though it’s not so prodigious.  And if things get very bad you’ve one resource left,” I added.

She wondered.  “To lock her up in her cabin?”

“No—­to come out of yours.”

“Ah never, never!  If it takes that to save her she must be lost.  Besides, what good would it do?  If I were to go above she could come below.”

“Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you.”

“Could I?” Mrs. Nettlepoint demanded in the manner of a woman who knew her son.

In the saloon the next day, after dinner, over the red cloth of the tables, beneath the swinging lamps and the racks of tumblers, decanters and wine-glasses, we sat down to whist, Mrs. Peck, to oblige, taking a hand in the game.  She played very badly and talked too much, and when the rubber was over assuaged her discomfiture (though not mine—­we had been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot.  We had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack.

“She hasn’t spoken to me yet—­she won’t do it,” she remarked in a moment.

“Is it possible there’s any one on the ship who hasn’t spoken to you?”

“Not that girl—­she knows too well!” Mrs. Peck looked round our little circle with a smile of intelligence—­she had familiar communicative eyes.  Several of our company had assembled, according to the wont, the last thing in the evening, of those who are cheerful at sea, for the consumption of grilled sardines and devilled bones.