After the business was what Mr. Doremus called "fixed up," he took me back to my chair on deck. Sally wasn't in her place, and as I was wondering what had become of her, the dressing-for-dinner bugle went wailing over the ship like a hungry Banshee. I said to myself that Sally must have gone early because her frock was to be particularly elaborate. I felt conscious of having heaps of interesting things to tell, and I understood exactly what Victoria means when she says she's in one of her "pretty and popular moods." I danced into our stateroom, where only a drawn curtain covers the open doorway. No one was there, and the cabin was so quiet that it seemed to greet me with a warning "S-sh!" Down fell my spirits with a dull thud, though I didn't know why. My joyousness changed to what storybook writers describe as a "foreboding of disaster"; but when I have it, it's generally connected with a lecture from Mother, so I know it only as a sneaky, "I haven't eaten the cream" sort of feeling. Just as I had begun to take off my frock, Louise appeared at the door which leads into the little drawing-room. She said that if I pleased, Madame would be glad to see me in her cabin. I hurried across to the other state-room opposite ours, and there found Mrs. Ess Kay, in a gorgeously embroidered pink satin Japanese thing, which she calls a kimona. She was sitting in a chair in front of the makeshift dressing-table, putting on her rings, and clasping bracelets on her wrists with vicious snaps. Sally, who hadn't begun to dress, was standing up, looking almost cross; that is, with different features from hers, she might have succeeded in looking cross. "Sit down, Betty, please; I want to talk to you," said Mrs. Ess Kay. Somehow, it always makes me feel stiff when she "Betty's" me, as my old nurse says it does with your ears if you eat broad beans. "If I do, I shall be late for dinner," said I, just as if a minute ago I hadn't been dying to pour out my news. "Never mind dinner, my dear girl," replied Mrs. Ess Kay, with an air which I do believe she tried to copy from Mother. "What I have to say is more important than dinner. I hope what I have been hearing isn't true." "That depends upon what it was," I retorted, disguising my pertness with a smile. "Don't think I've been tattling," said Sally. "Whatever my faults may be, _I_ haven't a Rubber Neck." I didn't know in the least what she meant; but afterwards she explained that if your neck is always pivoting round, to pry into other people's affairs, it is a Rubber Neck, and I shall remember the expression to tell Stan when I go home. He will like to add it to his collection of strange beasts.