"Oh, go away!" she implored. "I shall be better presently, but if you
stand there like that--Go and see if you can't get some other room, where
I needn't feel as if I were drowning, all the way over."
He obeyed, so far as to go away at once, and having once started, he did
not stop short of the purser's office. He made an excuse of getting
greenbacks for some English bank-notes, and then he said casually that he
supposed there would be no chance of having his room on the lower deck
changed for something a little less intimate with the sea. The purser was
not there to take the humorous view, but he conceived that March wanted
something higher up, and he was able to offer him a room of those on the
promenade where he had seen swells going in and out, for six hundred
dollars. March did not blench, but said he would get his wife to look at
it with him, and then he went out somewhat dizzily to take counsel with
himself how he should put the matter to her. She would be sure to ask
what the price of the new room would be, and he debated whether to take
it and tell her some kindly lie about it, or trust to the bracing effect
of the sum named in helping restore the lost balance of her nerves. He
was not so rich that he could throw six hundred dollars away, but there
might be worse things; and he walked up and down thinking.
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