But when Hildegarde, distracting herself an instant from her own watch, said, “Do you suppose it’s true those birds feed off barnacles on the whale’s back?”—Mrs. Locke’s little concern for what she stared at was evident in her answering, “There’s one thing I don’t understand.” “What’s that?” “You don’t seem to have much to say to your friend, the purser.” “My friend?” “Yes.” “He isn’t my friend.” “Oh.” “What made you think—” “Merely that he seemed to be when you came on board.” “You mean because he let me get into my room before the crowd came?” “Well, that was real friendliness, but it wasn’t what I meant.” “What did you mean?” “Oh, I only thought, since you called him by his Christian name, he might be a friend.” The tone conveyed the widest latitude—the most varied experience of other women’s vagaries, or their weakness. “_I_ called him by his Christian name!” ejaculated Hildegarde. “Yes.” “When in the world?” “That very first night.” “You must be dreaming.” Mrs. Locke shook her head. “Of course it’s no crime. I didn’t mean that.” “Crime? No. It would have been lunacy. But I never did it.” Mrs. Locke opened a little book that lay in her lap. Hildegarde leaned forward. For the first moment since waking she forgot the Arctic Cap. “Do help me to understand. What did I say?” Mrs. Locke’s clear brown eyes looked into the earnest face of the girl, and then a little unwillingly, “It wasn’t in the least my business,” she added. “What did you think you heard?” “Didn’t the purser come to the door asking if Miss Mar was ‘all right’? And didn’t you call out, ‘Is that you, Louis?’ and didn’t you run after him?” As Hildegarde’s perplexed face yielded to a gleam of horrified enlightenment, “Of course it wasn’t any business of mine,” Mrs. Locke repeated, and looked intently at the sea-birds flocking in a new place. “Do you—do you mean you think his name is—” “I don’t think. I know his name is Louis Napoleon Brown.” Hildegarde gasped out, “Then that was why!” “Why—” “Why he was so—surprising. _His_ name daring to be Louis! The _purser_! Oh, dear. Oh, _dear_,” and the girl began suddenly to laugh, and grew more and more convulsed the longer she thought about it, till she became hysterical. Mrs. Locke looked gravely at her, even frowning slightly. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. He thought I meant him. Oh! oh!” “You didn’t?” “And you think you know the world. You called me an infant.” “Well, I own I never could make it square with the rest of you.”