"I love rough weather," said Ann, lifting her face to the wind.
Her eyes were very bright. She was beyond any doubt or question
the only girl on earth. "Poor aunt Nesta doesn't. She was bad
enough when it was quite calm, but this storm has finished her.
I've just been down below, trying to cheer her up."
Jimmy thrilled at the picture. Always fascinating, Ann seemed to
him at her best in the role of ministering angel. He longed to
tell her so, but found no words. They reached the end of the
deck, and turned. Ann looked up at him.
"I've hardly seen anything of you since we sailed," she said. She
spoke almost reproachfully. "Tell me all about yourself, Mr.
Bayliss. Why are you going to America?"
Jimmy had had an impassioned indictment of the Rollos on his
tongue, but she had closed the opening for it as quickly as she
had made it. In face of her direct demand for information he
could not hark back to it now. After all, what did the Rollos
matter? They had no part in this little wind-swept world: they
were where they belonged, in some nether hell on the C. or D.
deck, moaning for death.
"To make a fortune, I hope," he said.
Ann was pleased at this confirmation of her diagnosis. She had
deduced this from the evidence at Paddington Station.
"How pleased your father will be if you do!"
The slight complexity of Jimmy's affairs caused him to pause for
a moment to sort out his fathers, but an instant's reflection
told him that she must be referring to Bayliss the butler.
"Yes."
"He's a dear old man," said Ann. "I suppose he's very proud of
you?"
"I hope so."
"You must do tremendously well in America, so as not to
disappoint him. What are you thinking of doing?"
Jimmy considered for a moment.
"Newspaper work, I think."
"Oh? Why, have you had any experience?"
"A little."
Ann seemed to grow a little aloof, as if her enthusiasm had been
damped.
"Oh, well, I suppose it's a good enough profession. I'm not very
fond of it myself. I've only met one newspaper man in my life,
and I dislike him very much, so I suppose that has prejudiced
me."
"Who was that?"
"You wouldn't have met him. He was on an American paper. A man
named Crocker."
A sudden gust of wind drove them back a step, rendering talk
impossible. It covered a gap when Jimmy could not have spoken.
The shock of the information that Ann had met him before made him
dumb. This thing was beyond him. It baffled him.
Her next words supplied a solution. They were under shelter of
one of the boats now and she could make herself heard.
"It was five years ago, and I only met him for a very short
while, but the prejudice has lasted."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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