"What's that you say?" The questioner was a sallow-faced youth upon the black-eyed lady's other side. Sunk deep in a fur-lined coat, his cap pulled low over his eyes--which were precisely like hers, even to the expression of discontent--he had seemed for the last hour to be slumbering. But at the moment he looked quite wide awake, as he turned his head toward his mother and challenged her latest statement. "What's that you say?" he repeated, in her own acrimonious tone.
"Oh, have you come to at last?" she inquired. "It is quite impossible to remember that though you sleep for hours you are liable to wake in time to contradict me on any point whatever. In this case it is of no consequence what I may have said."
"You were handing us the hot dope about Mrs. Craig's not being in the same class with Dr. Jeff. It certainly does take a woman to stick her claws into another woman's fur. There's one thing I can tell you--there isn't a man on board who'd agree with you. If she's a country girl--you can say good-bye for me to the little old town. I'm going to take to rural life till I find another. Talk about peaches and cream!"
"I believe I did not mention her complexion," his mother observed coldly.
"Neither did your little son--though it would bear mentioning. I should say yes! You said she hadn't any air. Jupiter--there she comes now. No air!"
He subsided into his high-turned fur collar but his eyes watched intently as the Craigs, still walking briskly after at least an hour's exercise, came up the deck from the stern. His mother, on the contrary, let her drooping lids fall indifferently. The moment they were out of possible hearing the young man sat up.
"By Jove, if you call that no air, tell the grande dames to get a move on. She walks like a young goddess--that's what."
"Silly boy! Nobody is talking of her face or her gait. If you don't know what I mean, no one can tell you."
"Oh, I know what you mean," her son assured her. "I get you. What I say is--you don't get _her_! Jefferson Craig's the one who gets her--lucky chap! Maybe he doesn't know it--oh, no! Maybe not!" And turning his back he once more appeared to slumber.
It was fortunate for Georgiana that she never even imagined such comments, though she passed these rows of critical eyes a hundred times a day, sat at table with people who were keenly observant of her every act and word, and spent some reluctant hours in the society of those who strove to cultivate her for their own blasé enjoyment. She only knew that among the company she met a number of interesting men and women, with whom she and her husband were thoroughly congenial, and that it did not matter in the least about the rest. If those whom she liked so much, and with whom she could talk with the greatest zest, turned out to be the men and women of scientific or literary achievement, this seemed only natural to the college-bred girl, and she cared not at all that she did not get on so easily with those whose distinction lay in purely social or financial lines.