"Ample," he answered.
"What secretary will you take?" He thought a moment. The two men in his office who might answer were well enough in their way, but the enforced intimacy of shipboard would probably discover unsuspected shortcomings.
"Would you be annoyed if I took a pretty girl?"
"Do you mean that slight dark girl I have seen? Oh, Elgar, I wish you would. It would be such company for me."
The Millionaire's Ship
"If you can arrange it, I'll take her. Probably her people wouldn’t let her come if I suggested it. I'll phone you her address from the office tomorrow and you can go and see her mother, if she has one. Tell her she will get twenty-five dollars a week. She ought to jump at it."
It was with the hope the girl would go that Mrs. Radway called next morning at the Unwins' home. Mr. Unwin had not yet gone to his work. He so much disliked broaching the subject of advertising to reluctant buyers of space, that he leaned on any excuse which might seem legitimately to keep him from the task.
On the morning that Mrs. Radway called he was waiting to interview a prospective advertiser who usually cleared up his morning's mail by eleven. Unwin explained to his wife that to force himself upon his client ere this would be to imperil the success of the adventure.
When the bell rang he thought instantly of bill collectors. The optimist who collected for a furniture instalment house would not come until tomorrow; the gas man had delivered his ultimatum yesterday. It should have been a peaceful morning.
He recognized Mrs. Radway instantly. At her marriage her portrait, by a famous painter, had helped to make her famous; since that time the society columns and Lavery's painting of her had kept her in the public eye.
The Unwins were delighted at the idea of Mary getting a whole month on shipboard. And the additional saving meant something to them. It was known that Radway had an evil reputation, but with Mrs. Radway aboard it was plainly to be a decorous cruise.
It was Mary herself who seemed dubious. She confided in her brother.
"I have a feeling," she said, "that I ought not to go. It's a kind of pre-sentiment. I shall be a month in a big boat all alone. What have I that will interest Mrs. Radway? I wish you could come."
"I wish they would find a job for me in the engine room!" he exclaimed. His eyes brightened at the prospect of such nearness to machinery at work. "Gee! Wouldn't that be luck. I could look after you and be learning something all the time.
"A millionaire's craft has all the latest improvements. I'm only getting thirty dollars a month at the office and I eat that. Sis, do you think it could be managed? Do you think there's something I could do?"
She Won Her Point
"If there isn't," she decided, "I won't go."
Radway was astounded at her demand.
"What do I want with an engine-adoring boy aboard?" he snapped. Perhaps your father would like to go also?"
She colored a little. He decided that when she flushed she was prettier than any girl in the Winter Follies.
"I'm rather relieved," she said quietly. "I didn't much want to go and now I certainly shall not."
"I suppose I shall have to find a place for him," Radway grumbled. He took up some plans and glanced at them. "There are four boats carried, I see, and one of them's a twenty-one
