"Faugh," said the trader's wife, "and Captain Image says she's one of the smartest business women in the world to-day, and that fat, greedy purser would propose to her in the next five minutes if he thought he'd a cat's chance of being accepted. They think her good-looking, too, I'll be bound, just because she wears those unsuitable clothes, and has pink color in her cheeks. Well, the clothes will be whisps of rag by this day week and"--the poor woman sighed here--"the Coast will get the color and the plumpness out of her face, and make her as lean and yellow as the rest of us in a month."
"You're a good, kind man," Miss O'Neill was saying to a very smiling Captain Image, "and I know I did tell the bedroom steward to have my big trunks got up on deck; but, you see, I'm a woman, and therefore it's my prerogative to be able to change my mind without being openly abused for it. So I want you, please, to be very nice and let me stay on the _M'poso_ a little longer."
"Miss Kate, I was sure you'd find that what I said was true, and that Smooth River factory was no place for a lady like you. You see those dead niggers are fresh now, but when the sun gets on 'em--er--I mean there's no trade coming into this section of the Coast just now till that blessed old King of Okky opens the roads again, and he won't do that yet awhile on his own dirty account, and neither you nor I have got the ju-ju that will make him. My dear Miss, I'm just as pleased as a monkey with green--er--with a green tail to hear you're going to take the round trip home with me, and if my clean collars do run out, you must remember that we all wear panjammers when we're south of the Islands and the trippers. If only I'd thought of shipping a jack-wash when I got my Krooboys at Sarry Leone. Well, one can't be prepared for everything."
The girl laughed. "I wouldn't strain the supply of collars for worlds. I only want you to take me two days on from here and drop me at this factory again on the way back."
The tint of Captain Image's vermilion face deepened to plum color. He scented irony, and his touchy Welsh temper bubbled up into view. "Miss," he said, "when I pull my anchors out of Smooth River mud in ten hours from now, I go out on the flood across the bar, and as you must know I walk in and do the civil in Water Street, Liverpool, before I smell the stink of these particular mud banks again."