“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney doesn’t care for a living thing but little Ned,” cried the voluble Marjorie. “If little Ned is safe she had just as lief the rest of us would go to the bottom as not.”
Mr. Floyd-Rosney took his wife by the elbow. “Come on,” he said, “why are you lagging back here,--afraid to get in the yawl?” Then he added in a lower voice, “Can you do nothing to stop that miserable girl’s chatter?”
But the voice, even hissing between his set teeth, was not so low that Marjorie, being near, did not hear it. At all events, _she_ had had no schooling in self-repression, in the humiliation of a politic deference. She flamed out with all the normal instincts of self-asserting and wounded pride.
“No, there isn’t any way to stop my chatter,”--she exclaimed hotly, “for I have as good a right to talk as you. I am _not_ a ‘miserable girl.’ But I don’t care what _you_ say. I don’t train with your gang, anyhow!”
“Why, Marjorie,” cried Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and her husband had a moment’s relief in the expectation that the indignity offered to him would be summarily, yet tactfully rebuked. But his wife only said, “What slang! Is that the kind of thing you learn at Madame Gerault’s?”
She passed her arm about the girl’s shoulder, but Marjorie had as yet learned no self-control at Madame Gerault’s or elsewhere, and burst into stormy tears. Even after she was seated in the yawl, beside Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, she wept persistently, and sobbed aloud. The grief-stricken spectacle greatly affected little Ned Floyd-Rosney at the further end of the yawl. After staring, in grave and flushed dismay and amaze for a few moments, he made one or two spasmodic efforts to cheer his boon companion from the distance. Then he succumbed to sympathy and wept dolorously and loudly in concert.
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney made no effort to reach him by word or look. Her husband, whose nerves a crying child affected with such intense aggravation that he was seldom subjected to this annoyance, was compelled to set his teeth in helpless discomfort, and endure the affliction, intensified by the difference in age, and the variance in pitch and vocal volume of the two lachrymose performers.
Thus freighted, the yawl pushed off, at length, into the steely rain, the white foam, and the surging, tawny currents of the river. All looked back at the sand-bar, doubtless, with some apprehensive regret. The sight of the stanch Captain on the deck waving his farewell was not calculated to dispel anxiety. The sand-bar, too, was big,--on board they had scarcely realized its extent. In comparison with the yawl it seemed very solid, continental. They sheered off cautiously from it lest the yawl, too, go aground on some submerged and unsuspected process of land building. It was obviously safer in the middle of the river, despite the menacing aspect of the swift tumultuous current, lashed into foaming swirls by the blast. The tremendous impetus of the flow was demonstrated by the speed of the yawl; in one moment the steamer had disappeared, its great white bulk, lifted high on the sand-bar, showed like a mirage through a sudden parting of the dashing torrents, then fell astern to be glimpsed no more. When the yawl began to run precipitately toward the bank there was a general outcry of fear, but the mate, who was navigating the little craft, explained that it must needs go with the sweep of the current, which now hugged the shore, for the strength of his crew could not make headway against it, heavily laden as the yawl was.