to his making a capable ruler. Boy was awfully taken with the words, though he was much too modest to think that he would have been the one chosen.
'By Jove,' was all he said, 'if only one had the chance.'
It was just after leaving Port Said that Boy came to me with that serious look on his bright young face that always made me half inclined to smile. It seemed to suit it at once so well and yet so ill.
'What is it, Boy?' I asked as he sat down beside me, and I guessed that he found it hard to begin what he had to say. He turned and smiled at me in his own delightful way.
'Oh, it's only a favour I wanted to ask you,' he said, and then he stopped. It seemed that it was evidently a difficult favour to ask, and yet I should have thought that he had got to know me well enough in the last week to guess that I would have done much at his request.
'What is it?' I asked again, and then he blurted it all out in his own boyish way.
'It's Mrs. Simpkin-Briston,' he said, dropping unconsciously into his favourite attitude, not looking at me but gazing out to sea as if he found it easier to speak that way. 'None of the ladies will have anything to say to her on board, and I'm sure she feels it. I want you to go and talk to her sometimes, will you?'
He turned round and looked me full in the face then. Poor Boy! he little knew to what a test he was putting a woman's friendship. A woman will
