loaded down in utter defiance of the Plimsoll law, with Rollos and Clarences and Dwights and Twombleys who had known and golfed and ridden and driven and motored and swum and danced with Ann for years.  A ghastly being entitled Edgar Something or Teddy Something had beaten Jimmy by a short head in the race for the deck-steward, the prize of which was the placing of his deck-chair next to Ann’s.  Jimmy had been driven from the promenade deck by the spectacle of this beastly creature lying swathed in rugs reading best-sellers to her.

He had scarcely seen her to speak to since the beginning of the voyage.  When she was not walking with Rolly or playing shuffle-board with Twombley, she was down below ministering to the comfort of a chronically sea-sick aunt, referred to in conversation as “poor aunt Nesta”.  Sometimes Jimmy saw the little man—­presumably her uncle—­in the smoking-room, and once he came upon the stout boy recovering from the effects of a cigar in a quiet corner of the boat-deck:  but apart from these meetings the family was as distant from him as if he had never seen Ann at all—­let alone saved her life.

And now she had dropped down on him from heaven.  They were alone together with the good clean wind and the bracing scud.  Rollo, Clarence, Dwight, and Twombley, not to mention Edgar or possibly Teddy, were down below—­he hoped, dying.  They had the world to themselves.

“I love rough weather,” said Ann, lifting her face to the wind.  Her eyes were very bright.  She was beyond any doubt or question the only girl on earth.  “Poor aunt Nesta doesn’t.  She was bad enough when it was quite calm, but this storm has finished her.  I’ve just been down below, trying to cheer her up.”

Jimmy thrilled at the picture.  Always fascinating, Ann seemed to him at her best in the role of ministering angel.  He longed to tell her so, but found no words.  They reached the end of the deck, and turned.  Ann looked up at him.

“I’ve hardly seen anything of you since we sailed,” she said.  She spoke almost reproachfully.  “Tell me all about yourself, Mr. Bayliss.  Why are you going to America?”

Jimmy had had an impassioned indictment of the Rollos on his tongue, but she had closed the opening for it as quickly as she had made it.  In face of her direct demand for information he could not hark back to it now.  After all, what did the Rollos matter?  They had no part in this little wind-swept world:  they were where they belonged, in some nether hell on the C. or D. deck, moaning for death.

“To make a fortune, I hope,” he said.

Ann was pleased at this confirmation of her diagnosis.  She had deduced this from the evidence at Paddington Station.

“How pleased your father will be if you do!”

The slight complexity of Jimmy’s affairs caused him to pause for a moment to sort out his fathers, but an instant’s reflection told him that she must be referring to Bayliss the butler.