Winnie Childs, the Shop Girl

								

lying down rather than walking. It was only the fifth who would not
take the weather's "no" for an answer.
She had a mackintosh, and with her head looking very small and neat,
wound in a brown veil the colour of her hair, she joined the brigade
of the strong men and women who defied the winds by night. From eight
to ten she staggered and slid up and down the wet length of the
least-frequented deck, or flopped and gasped joyously for a few
minutes in an unclaimed chair.
Being "not a bit like the rest" of her sister dryads, she refrained
from mentioning this habit to Mr. Rolls, whose prowling place was on
higher decks. Not that she was still what he would have called
"standoffish" with him. That would have been silly and Victorian after
the grapefruit and chocolates and novels, to say nothing of balm by
the bottleful. The last dress she had worn on the first day of their
acquaintance, the "Yielding Heart," had to a certain extent prophesied
her attitude with the one man who knocked at the dryad door. Miss
Child not only thought Mr. Rolls "might be rather nice," but was
almost sure he was. She was nice to him, too, in dryad land, when he
paid his visits to the sisterhood, but she did not "belong on his
deck."
By and by, however, he discovered her in the mackintosh and veil. It
was one night when a young playwright who had seized on him as prey
wished to find a quiet place to be eloquent about the plot.
"There's a deck two below," said the aspirant for fame, "where nobody
prowls except a young female panther tied up in a veil."
Five minutes later Peter Rolls took off his cap to the female panther.
The playwright noticed this, but was too much interested in himself
and the hope of securing a capitalist to care. In sketching out his
comedy he was blind to any other possibilities of drama, and so did
not see Peter's eagerness to get rid of him. He was even pleased when,
after a few compliments, Rolls junior said: "Look here, you'd better
leave me to think over what you've told me. I fix things in my memory
that way. And maybe when I've got it straight in my head
I'll--er--mention it to a man I know."
As the playwright was shivering, he obeyed with alacrity; and in the
warmth of the smoking-room revelled in the picture of his tame
capitalist pacing a cold deck, lost to the sea's welter in thoughts of
that marvellous last act.
But it was a first act which was engaging Peter Rolls's attention, and
he, though the only male character in it (by choice), had to learn his
part as he went on.
The play began by his joining the leading lady. (This has been done
before, but seldom with such a lurch and on such sloping boards.)
It would have been a mockery to say "good evening" on a night so vile,
and Mr. Rolls began by asking Miss Child if he might walk with her.
"Or tango," said she. "This deck is teaching me some wonderful new
steps."
"I wish you'd teach them to me," said Peter.