The cook and the steward might have been more directly concerned. But
the steward used to remark on occasion, 'Oh, she gives no extra trouble,'
with scrupulous fairness of the most gloomy kind. He was rather a silent
man with a great sense of his personal worth which made his speeches
guarded. The cook, a neat man with fair side whiskers, who had been only
three years in the ship, seemed the least concerned. He was even known
to have inquired once or twice as to the success of some of his dishes
with the captain's wife. This was considered a sort of disloyal falling
away from the ruling feeling.
The mate's annoyance was yet the easiest to understand. As he let it out
to Powell before the first week of the passage was over: 'You can't
expect me to be pleased at being chucked out of the saloon as if I
weren't good enough to sit down to meat with that woman.' But he
hastened to add: 'Don't you think I'm blaming the captain. He isn't a
man to be found fault with. You, Mr. Powell, are too young yet to
understand such matters.'
Some considerable time afterwards, at the end of a conversation of that
aggrieved sort, he enlarged a little more by repeating: 'Yes! You are
too young to understand these things.
Pages:
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443