The Honorable Percival

								

part of some aggressive American that caused him to preserve his deep
seclusion.
Bored, blasé, blighted, he had one more affliction to endure. The young
person had gotten hopelessly on his nerves; in fact, she was the most
disturbing object on the horizon. She played shuffle-board in front of
his chair when he wanted to read; she practised new dance-steps with
the first officer when he wanted to sleep; she caused him to lift his
unwilling eyes a dozen times an hour by her endless circuits of the
deck. She was on terms of friendship with everybody on board except
himself, including the second class and steerage. There seemed no end to
her activities, no limit to her enthusiasm. The more she attracted his
unwilling attention, the more persistently he ignored her.
As the time passed and danger of intrusion lessened, his ennui
increased. One dull, humid day, when the whole world resembled a
dripping sponge, Percival reached the limit of his endurance. The canvas
was down, and nothing could be seen but long vistas of slippery decks,
with barefooted Chinese sailors everlastingly mopping and slopping about
in the wet. He had counted the five hundred and fiftieth raindrop that
clung to the red life-belt at the rail when he saw the young Scotchman
next him look at his watch.
"What time do you make it?" asked Percival, and his voice sounded almost
strange to him.
"Eleven," said the man, getting to his feet; "aboot time for the fun to
begin in the bathing-tank."
Ordinarily Percival would have allowed the conversation to end there,
but he felt now that he would be risking his sanity if he sat there any
longer counting raindrops.
"What's taking place?" he asked listlessly.
"The usual morning diversion: the captain's daughter is teaching a
couple of bairns to swim."
"Surely they won't go in on a beastly day like this!"
"I'll be bound they do. Shall we go find out?"
Forward a number of people were already hanging over the rail, highly
diverted at what was taking place in the big canvas tank on the deck
below. Percival, looking down, beheld the young person standing on
the lower rung of a ladder, coaxing a small boy to jump from the
platform above. Now, on several occasions in the past Percival had met
Disillusion face to face in a bathing-suit. A certain attenuated memory
of the faithless Hortense made him wince even yet. But the round and
graceful figure poised in dancing impatience on the ladder-rung defied
criticism. Much as he disapproved of the public exhibition, he could not
check a breath of admiration.
The small boy shivering on the platform vibrated between courage and
fear; then, urged by the shouts from above, and lured by that sparkling
face and those outstretched arms below, he leaped. Shrieks of laughter
followed as his fat little body spanked the water, and was quickly
righted and deposited, gasping, but victorious, on a life-buoy. Then the
small girl must dive, and after that all three must splash and jump and