And Sally herself was busy disguising herself, loosening up her hair coquettishly, smiling the primness out of the set corners of her mouth and even--let the truth be told at all costs--even passing a pink-powdered puff over her pale cheeks with guilty surreptition. Thus arrayed she was soon joining the conspirators bedecking the bower for the expected bride and groom. She was the youngest and most mischievous of the lot. She felt herself a bride again, and vowed to protect this timid little wife to come from too much hilarity at the hands of the conspirators. CHAPTER VIII A MIXED PICKLE Mrs. Whitcomb had almost blushed when she had murmured to Lieutenant Hudson: "I should think the young couple would have preferred a stateroom." And Mr. Hudson had flinched a little as he explained: "Yes, of course. We tried to get it, but it was gone." It was during the excitement over the decoration of the bridal section, that the stateroom-tenants slipped in unobserved. First came a fluttering woman whose youthful beauty had a certain hue of experience, saddening and wisering. The porter brought her in from the station-platform, led her to the stateroom's concave door and passed in with her luggage. But she lingered without, a Peri at the gate of Paradise. When the porter returned to bow her in, she shivered and hesitated, and then demanded: "Oh, Porter, are you sure there's nobody else in there?" The porter chuckled, but humored her panic. "I ain't seen nobody. Shall I look under the seat?" To his dismay, she nodded her head violently. He rolled his eyes in wonderment, but returned to the stateroom, made a pretense of examination, and came back with a face full of reassurance. "No'm, they's nobody there. Take a mighty small-size burglar to squeeje unda that baid--er--berth. No'm, nobody there." "Oh!" The gasp was so equivocal that he made bold to ask: "Is you pleased or disappointed?" The mysterious young woman was too much agitated to rebuke the impudence. She merely sighed: "Oh, porter, I'm so anxious." "I'm not--now," he muttered, for she handed him a coin. "Porter, have you seen anybody on board that looks suspicious?" "Evvabody looks suspicious to me, Missy. But what was you expecting--especial?" "Oh, porter, have you seen anybody that looks like a detective in disguise?" "Well, they's one man looks 's if he was disguised as a balloon, but I don't believe he's no slooch-hound." "Well, if you see anything that looks like a detective and he asks for Mrs. Fosdick----" "Mrs. What-dick?" "Mrs. Fosdick! You tell him I'm not on board." And she gave him another coin. "Yassum," said the porter, lingering willingly on such fertile soil. "I'll tell him Mrs. Fosdick done give me her word she wasn't on bode." "Yes!--and if a woman should ask you." "What kind of a woman?" "The hideous kind that men call handsome." "Oh, ain't they hideous, them handsome women?"