Love stories; Nobility -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Switzerland -- Fiction
“I did,” admitted Godfrey, rising and buttoning his waistcoat.
“I have had a very troubled night; all sorts of things happened to
me.”
“What have you been doing?” asked Miss Ogilvy, whose interest was
excited.
Then Godfrey, whose bosom was bursting, told her all, and the story
lasted most of the way to Dover.
“You poor boy,” she said, when he had finished, “you poor
boy!”
“I left the basket with the food behind, and I am so hungry,”
remarked Godfrey presently.
“There’s a restaurant car on the train, come and have some
breakfast,” said Miss Ogilvy, “for on the boat you may not wish to
eat. I shall at any rate.”
This was untrue for she had breakfasted already, but that did not
matter.
“My father said I was not to take meals on the trains,” explained
Godfrey, awkwardly, “because of the expense.”
“Oh! I’m your father, or rather your mother, now. Besides, I have a
table,” she added in a nebulous manner.
So Godfrey followed her to the dining car, where he made an excellent
meal.
“You don’t seem to eat much,” he said at length. “You
have only had a cup of tea and half a bit of toast.”
“I never can when I am going on the sea,” she explained. “I
expect I shall be very ill, and you will have to look after me, and you
know the less you eat, well—the less you can be ill.”
“Why did you not tell me that before?” he remarked, contemplating
his empty plate with a gloomy eye. “Besides I expect we shall be in
different parts of the ship.”
“Oh! I daresay it can be arranged,” she answered.
And as a matter of fact, it was “arranged,” all the way to Lucerne.
At Dover station Miss Ogilvy had a hurried interview at the ticket
office. Godfrey did not in the least understand what she was doing, but
as a result he was her companion throughout the long journey. The
crossing was very rough, and it was Godfrey who was ill, excessively
ill, not Miss Ogilvy who, with the assistance of her maid and the
steward, attended assiduously to him in his agonies.
“And to think,” he moaned faintly as they moored alongside of the
French pier, “that once I wished to be a sailor.”
“Nelson was always sick,” said Miss Ogilvy, wiping his damp brow
with a scented pocket-handkerchief, while the maid held the
smelling-salts to his nose.
“Then he must have been a fool to go to sea,” muttered Godfrey, and
relapsed into a torpor, from which he awoke only to find himself
stretched at length on the cushions of a first-class carriage.
Later on, the journey became very agreeable. Godfrey was interested in
everything, being of a quick and receptive mind, and Miss Ogilvy proved
a fund of information. When they had exhausted the scenery they
conversed on other topics. Soon she knew everything there was to know
about him and Isobel, whom it was evident she could not understand.
“Tell me,” she said, looking at his dark and rather unusual eyes,
“do you ever have dreams, Godfrey?” for now she called him by his
Christian name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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