Finding she meant to blockade him, Jerry turned his attention to cleaning the animals, when the quick eye of the French girl discovered the monkey, and she determined to thaw her cold idol by threatening him with exposing the child's secret; so she started, and exclaimed with an affected little scream, "Oh, Monsieur Thompe-sonne! vare deed you get zat monquai?" "It's mine, miss; I've had it a long time," he coolly replied. Adèle got up, walked to the cabin door, surveyed the animal with a slightly contemptuous air, and observed, "Zat is Meece Barbe's monquai." "Oh no, it ain't; it ain't the little gal's; it's mine." "Oh no. Monsieur, I know zat monquai; it my fingare bited too many times. Her papa zay it vas to be kill, but one leetle niggare boy he zave it, and now meece hide it here--I must tell her papa of it." "For goodness' sake, don't do that!" whispered the fellow, quite forgetting in his anxiety to shield his favourite from trouble, that probably her papa only deprived his child of her plaything because he thought it could not be accommodated on board. "Oh, please don't tell on the pretty baby." Adèle walked into the cabin, gazed almost fiercely in his face, and exclaimed, "Vy should I hold my tongue? _you_ do not care for _me_. Vy should I do so for zo meece?" "Phew!" whistled Jerry, seeing in a moment what the girl meant. "Why, my dear may-dam-mosselle, I'll do anything to please you, if you won't split about the monkey." "I do not vant to spleet ze monquai--mais I vant ze leetle politeness from yourself, Monsieur Thompe-sonne. Do you like me? No! Ees it zat I am zo uglee donc!" "Lord bless you, miss, I'm in a perfect fever about you. But please get out of my cabin, the engineers are a-looking over here, and making fun of us." "Pah! what you care for zengeneers! If zey laugh, you can blow zem viz ze boxe; you are brave. Vous êtes un vrai Hercule!" "Anything you like, miss, if you'll only get out of my cabin." "Monsieur Thompe-sonne," cried the girl, now thoroughly roused, and indifferent to any consequences to herself or the man she admired, "Ger-rrr-ai, do you lofe me?" "Lord bless you, miss, I adore you; but do, if you please, get out of my cabin." After much persuasion she finally left his presence, but not until she had extorted from him the word "yes," in reply to her inquiry, "Do you lofe me?" It appeared that she had, from some French novel, taken the idea that all the English law required was the repeating of the word "yes" on the part of the man; evidently the author must have taken a passage from the marriage service and introduced it in his story as "a manner and custom of the John Boule," as after Jerry had said that word she became as submissive as a slave, and that evening told her mistress, in great confidence, "zat she was going to be married to ze brave Monsieur Thompe-sonne as soon as zey arrived."