He glanced round to observe if anyone was near enough to have overheard him. ‘I can tell you nothing, Mr. Harris,’ said I. ‘The gipsy and her lies may be put on one side,’ said he. ‘In fact, if I catch her aft again with her confounded yarns I’ll make her wish that this ship had never been built with a poop. Sir Frederick Thompson’s opinion is another matter. I don’t reckon you’re a Calthorpe, as he calls it; for there’s no inward echo to the name, and an inward echo there’d be if a Calthorpe you were, so I think, and I believe I’m no fool. But if you’re not a Calthorpe, you may be somebody as good and perhaps better.’ After a pause he exclaimed, ‘Suppose your memory don’t return to you?’ ‘Do not suppose it,’ I cried with bitterness. ‘I wish to say nothing to wound you, miss,’ said he, ‘but there can be no harm in us two talking matters over. It’s early as yet, the ship doesn’t want watching, a more beautiful night you may sail round the world twenty times over without falling in with. You’ve got to consider this; suppose your memory don’t return--what then?’ I did not answer. ‘Of course,’ continued he, ‘your memory is going to return some time or other. The faculty’s alive. It’s only turned in for the present. Some of these days something’ll happen to act like the thump of a bo’sun’s handspike, and the faculty’ll tumble up wide awake as though it was to a roar of “All hands!” But whatever it be that’s going to rout that sleeping faculty out may keep you waiting. And meanwhile?’ I had no answer to make him and held my peace. ‘The captain, no doubt,’ he went on, ‘will keep you on board this ship until her arrival in London, if so be your memory won’t enable him to send you home sooner. But when this ship arrives in dock, what then? You can’t go on living on board her. The captain’s got no home now that his wife and child are dead. He’s a good man and might find you a lodging for a bit, but he don’t stay ashore above a couple or three months. And what, I’ve been asking of myself ever since that gipsy was aft here with her lying yarns, what’s to become of you?’ I drew myself erect and my foot tapped the deck with vexation and distress. ‘For God’s sake, miss,’ said he, ‘don’t feel offended by anything I may say. You have friends aboard, and I want to be one of them, and prove myself one of them by behaving as a friend, and perhaps as more than a friend. My object in keeping you yarning here is to ask you to think over what’s to become of you if your memory hasn’t returned by the time the ship reaches England.’ I bit my lip and answered with a struggle, ‘What would be the good of my thinking? My memory may return. In any case I must trust in God to help me.’