“Which soup shall I take?” he asked, turning with a frown of uncertainty to his wife.

“I should say the consomme, Julius,” was the reply.

“I thought I should like the broth better,” he objected.

“I don’t think it will disagree with you,” she said.

“Perhaps I had better have the consomme,” he argued, looking with appeal to his wife and then to the girl at his right.  “Which would you take, Mary?”

“I?” said the young woman; “I should take both in my present state of appetite.—­Steward, bring both soups.—­What wine shall I order for you, Julius?  I want some champagne, and I prescribe it for you.  After your mental struggle over the soup question you need a quick stimulant.”

“Don’t you think a red wine would be better for me?” he asked; “or perhaps some sauterne?  I’m afraid that I sha’n’t go to sleep if I drink champagne.  In fact, I don’t think I had better take any wine at all.  Perhaps some ginger ale or Apollinaris water.”

“No,” she said decisively, “whatever you decide upon, you know that you’ll think whatever I have better for you, and I shall want more than one glass, and Alice wants some, too.  Oh, yes, you do, and I shall order a quart of champagne.—­Steward”—­giving her order—­“please be as quick as you can.”

John had by this fully identified his neighbors, and the talk which ensued between them, consisting mostly of controversies between the invalid and his family over the items of the bill of fare, every course being discussed as to its probable effect upon his stomach or his nerves—­the question being usually settled with a whimsical high-handedness by the young woman—­gave him a pretty good notion of their relations and the state of affairs in general.  Notwithstanding Miss Blake’s benevolent despotism, the invalid was still wrangling feebly over some last dish when John rose and went to the smoking room for his coffee and cigarette.

When he stumbled out in search of his bath the next morning the steamer was well out, and rolling and pitching in a way calculated to disturb the gastric functions of the hardiest.  But, after a shower of sea water and a rub down, he found himself with a feeling for bacon and eggs that made him proud of himself, and he went in to breakfast to find, rather to his, surprise, that Miss Blake was before him, looking as fresh—­well, as fresh as a handsome girl of nineteen or twenty and in perfect health could look.  She acknowledged his perfunctory bow as he took his seat with a stiff little bend of the head; but later on, when the steward was absent on some order, he elicited a “Thank you!” by handing her something which he saw she wanted, and, one thing leading to another, as things have a way of doing where young and attractive people are concerned, they were presently engaged in an interchange of small talk, but before John was moved to the point of disclosing himself on the warrant of a former acquaintance she had finished her breakfast.