Darrow smiled at the intensity of her distress. It was food for the moralist that, side by side with such catastrophes as his, human nature was still agitating itself over its microscopic woes!
“Here’s mine if you want it!” he shouted back at her through the shouting of the gale.
The offer caused the young lady to look at him more intently. “Why, it’s Mr. Darrow!” she exclaimed; and then, all radiant recognition: “Oh, thank you! We’ll share it, if you will.”
She knew him, then; and he knew her; but how and where had they met? He put aside the problem for subsequent solution, and drawing her into a more sheltered corner, bade her wait till he could find his porter.
When, a few minutes later, he came back with his recovered property, and the news that the boat would not leave till the tide had turned, she showed no concern.
“Not for two hours? How lucky—then I can find my trunk!”
Ordinarily Darrow would have felt little disposed to involve himself in the adventure of a young female who had lost her trunk; but at the moment he was glad of any pretext for activity. Even should he decide to take the next up train from Dover he still had a yawning hour to fill; and the obvious remedy was to devote it to the loveliness in distress under his umbrella.
“You’ve lost a trunk? Let me see if I can find it.”
It pleased him that she did not return the conventional “Oh, would you?” Instead, she corrected him with a laugh—“Not a trunk, but my trunk; I’ve no other—” and then added briskly: “You’d better first see to getting your own things on the boat.”
This made him answer, as if to give substance to his plans by discussing them: “I don’t actually know that I’m going over.”
“Not going over?”
“Well ... perhaps not by this boat.” Again he felt a stealing indecision. “I may probably have to go back to London. I’m—I’m waiting ... expecting a letter...(She’ll think me a defaulter,” he reflected.) “But meanwhile there’s plenty of time to find your trunk.”
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