When March offered him his card, he said he had none of his own with him,
but that his name was Eltwin. He betrayed a simple wish to have March
realize the local importance he had left behind him; and it was not hard
to comply; March saw a Grand Army button in the lapel of his coat, and he
knew that he was in the presence of a veteran.
He tried to guess his rank; in telling his wife about him, when he went
down to find her just before dinner, but he ended with a certain sense of
affliction. "There are too many elderly invalids on this ship. I knock
against people of my own age everywhere. Why aren't your youthful lovers
more in evidence, my dear? I don't believe they are lovers, and I begin
to doubt if they're young even."
"It wasn't very satisfactory at lunch, certainly," she owned. "But I know
it will be different at dinner." She was putting herself together after a
nap that had made up for the lost sleep of the night before. "I want you
to look very nice, dear. Shall you dress for dinner?" she asked her
husband's image in the state-room glass which she was preoccupying.
"I shall dress in my pea-jacket and sea-boots," it answered.
"I have heard that they always dress for dinner on the big Cunard and
White Star boats, when it's good weather," she went on, placidly.
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