The Honorable Percival

								

"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.
The absence of a chaperon puzzled him. The two other women at the table,
a Mrs. Weston and her daughter, had evidently just met her, and the
captain seemed to be the only one who had known her before. He called
her "Bobby," and treated her with the easy familiarity of a big brother.
"Don't talk to me about Wyoming!" he was saying now, in answer to some
boast of hers. "Anybody can have it that wants it. I make 'em a present
of it, with Dakota thrown in. You remember, Bobby, the last time I was
at the ranch? All hands on deck at two bells in the morning watch, a
twenty-mile sail on a bucking bronco, then back to the ranch, where we
shipped a cargo of food that would sink a tramp, A gallon or so of soup
in the hold, a saddle of venison, a broiled antelope, and six vegetables
in the forward hatchway, with three kinds of pie in the bunkers. It was
a regular food jag three times a day. It took me just two weeks at sea
to get over those two days on land."
Percival stirred uneasily. His tea and toast were long in coming, and a
certain haunted look was dawning on his face. Through the port-holes he
could see the deep-purple sky rising to give place to still deeper-purple
sea as the ship rose with sickening regularity. He took an olive.
"Isn't there a good deal of motion?" asked Mrs. Weston, a delicate,
appealing blonde, whose opinions were always tentative until they
received the stamp of masculine approval.
"Motion!" thundered the captain, bringing down a huge tattooed fist on