A fortnight after receiving this letter, Miss Verinder was established at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool. She had with her as travelling companion Mr. Cairns, late captain of the _Mercedaria_; and he and she, passing here and there unnoticed among the war crowd at the big hotel, were exceedingly busy--so busy, in fact, that she had no spare moments for reviving sentimental memories of her only previous visit to this great maritime city.
Cairns, although so much older now than then, still gave one the same impression of solidity and trustworthiness. He still loved his joke, but the years had made him a little asthmatic and his laughter was apt to end in a fit of coughing. Emmie, taking tender care of him, made him give another turn of the muffler round his neck as they rowed up the river one morning and met the sharp winter’s breeze on their faces. In the rowboat with them were two shabby-looking elderly men that Cairns had produced after searching among his seafaring and commercial acquaintance. These queer associates were Mr. Gann, a tall, mournful man, and Mr. Rice, who was stout and jovial; and by Cairns’s arrangement they and Emmie had entered into a little partnership for the purpose of buying an iron steamer named the _Marian II._, this vessel being one of three that a panic-stricken owner desired to shuffle off his hands. To-day they were going over her for a last look round, before taking the plunge.
“I don’t like being mixed up in business with a woman,” Mr. Gann had said sadly, after his first introduction to Emmie’s pale face, charming graceful manner, and fashionable London costume. “Always lands you in more than you bargained for.”
But Cairns had reassured them, and, as it were, thrown them into Emmie’s arms.
“My lads,” said Cairns, “don’t you worry about her being a woman. Take it from me, she has more grit than half a dozen ordinary men.”
Now they were beginning to think that Cairns was right.
Truly she was wonderful, ducking under a wet hawser that caught one of her partners as the boat approached the wharf alongside which lay _Marian II._, climbing slippery steps, and crossing a rickety gangway to get on board. Yet it would have been impossible to imagine anybody who appeared more incongruous to the business and the scene. In the bright cold sunshine the ship seemed a melancholy ruin, full of rust and grime, with the air of forlorn abandonment proper to a thing created for men’s use but deserted by all mankind; and Emmie, dressed in her fur coat, with her veil neatly tied under her narrow chin and her chamois leather gloves being blackened by each bit of wood or metal that they touched, was like a lady going over a house that she thinks of taking for a term of years. As she walked about with Cairns and the caretaker, now on the rusting decks, now in the gloomy depths, she asked a multitude of questions, all charmingly unprofessional and yet all full of common-sense.