"I shouldn't have forgiven myself," March said, "if we hadn't let Tom
know that twenty minutes after he left us we were still alive and well."
"It's to Bella, too," she reasoned.
He found her making their state-room look homelike with their familiar
things when he came with their daughter's steamer letter and the flowers
and fruit she had sent. She said, Very well, they would all keep, and
went on with her unpacking. He asked her if she did not think these home
things made it rather ghastly, and she said if he kept on in that way she
should certainly go back on the pilot-boat. He perceived that her nerves
were spent. He had resisted the impulse to an ill-timed joke about the
life-preservers under their berths when the sound of the breakfast-horn,
wavering first in the distance, found its way nearer and clearer down
their corridor.
VII.
In one of the many visits to the steamship office which his wife's
anxieties obliged him to make, March had discussed the question of seats
in the dining-saloon. At first he had his ambition for the captain's
table, but they convinced him more easily than he afterwards convinced
Mrs. March that the captain's table had become a superstition of the
past, and conferred no special honor.
Pages:
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054