She looked at him out of her indomitable blue eyes, and said, "If it hadn't been for your card, and the Reverend on it, I should have said you were an actor.""Well, well," said Mr. Breckon, with a laugh, perhaps I am, in a way.
I oughtn't to be, of course, but if a minister ever forces himself, Isuppose he's acting."
"I don't see," said Lottie, instantly availing herself of the opening, "how you can get up and pray, Sunday after Sunday, whether you feel like it or not."The young man said, with another laugh, but not so gay, " Well, the case has its difficulties.""Or perhaps you just read prayers," Lottie sharply conjectured.
"No," he returned, "I haven't that advantage--if you think it one.
I'm a sort of a Unitarian. Very advanced, too, I'm afraid.""Is that a kind of Universalist?"
"Not--not exactly. There's an old joke--I'm not sure it's very good--which distinguishes between the sects. It's said that the Universalists think God is too good to damn them, and the Unitarians think they are too good to be damned." Lottie shrank a little from him. "Ah!" he cried, "you think it sounds wicked. Well, I'm sorry. I'm not clerical enough to joke about serious things."He looked into her face with a pretended anxiety. "Oh, I don't know,"she said, with a little scorn. "I guess if you can stand it, I can.""I'm not sure that I can. I'm afraid it's more in keeping with an actor's profession than my own. Why," he added, as if to make a diversion, "should you have thought I was an actor?""I suppose because you were clean-shaved; and your pronunciation. So Englishy.""Is it? Perhaps I ought to be proud. But I'm not an Englishman. I am a plain republican American. May I ask if you are English?""Oh!" said Lottie. "As if you thought such a thing. We're from Ohio."Mr. Breckon said, "Ah!" Lottie could not make out in just what sense.
By this time they were leaning on the rail of the promenade, looking over at what little was left of Long Island, and she said, abruptly: "I think I will go and see how my father is getting along.""Oh, do take me with you, Miss Kenton!" Mr: Breckon entreated. "I am feeling very badly about that poor old joke. I know you don't think well of me for it, and I wish to report what I've been saying to your father, and let him judge me. I've heard that it's hard to live up to Ohio people when you're at your best, and I do hope you'll believe I have not been quite at my best. Will you let me come with you?"Lottie did not know whether he was making fun of her or not, but she said, "Oh, it's a free country," and allowed him to go with her.
His preface made the judge look rather grave; but when he came to the joke, Kenton laughed and said it was not bad.
"Oh, but that isn't quite the point," said Mr. Breckon. "The question is whether I am good in repeating it to a young lady who was seeking serious instruction on a point of theology.""I don't know what she would have done with the instruction if she had got it," said the judge, dryly, and the young man ventured in her behalf:
"It would be difficult for any one to manage, perhaps.""Perhaps," Kenton assented, and Lottie could see that he was thinking Ellen would know what to do with it.
She resented that, and she was in the offence that girls feel when their elders make them the subject of comment with their contemporaries.
"Well, I'll leave you to discuss it alone. I'm going to Ellen," she said, the young man vainly following her a few paces, with apologetic gurgles of laughter.
"That's right," her father consented, and then he seized the opening to speak about Ellen. "My eldest daughter is something of an invalid, but Ihope we shall have her on deck before the voyage is over. She is more interested in those matters than her sister.""Oh!" Mr. Breckon interpolated, in a note of sympathetic interest. He could not well do more.
It was enough for Judge Kenton, who launched himself upon the celebration of Ellen's gifts and qualities with a simple-hearted eagerness which he afterwards denied when his wife accused him of it, but justified as wholly safe in view of Mr. Breckon's calling and his obvious delicacy of mind. It was something that such a person would understand, and Kenton was sure that he had not unduly praised the girl. A less besotted parent might have suspected that he had not deeply interested his listener, who seemed glad of the diversion operated by Boyne's coming to growl upon his father, "Mother's bringing Ellen up.""Oh, then, I mustn't keep your chair," said the minister, and he rose promptly from the place he had taken beside the judge, and got himself away to the other side of the ship before the judge could frame a fitting request for him to stay.
"If you had," Mrs. Kenton declared, when he regretted this to her, "I don't know what I would have done. It's bad enough for him to hear you bragging about the child without being kept to help take care of her, or keep her amused, as you call it. I will see that Ellen is kept amused without calling upon strangers." She intimated that if Kenton did not act with more self-restraint she should do little less than take Ellen ashore, and abandon him to the voyage alone. Under the intimidation he promised not to speak of Ellen again.
At luncheon, where Mr. Breckon again devoted himself to Lottie, he and Ellen vied in ignoring each other after their introduction, as far as words went. The girl smiled once or twice at what he was saying to her sister, and his glance kindled when it detected her smile. He might be supposed to spare her his conversation in her own interest, she looked so little able to cope with the exigencies of the talk he kept going.
When he addressed her she answered as if she had not been listening, and he turned back to Lottie. After luncheon he walked with her, and their acquaintance made such a swift advance that she was able to ask him if he laughed that way with everybody.
He laughed, and then he begged her pardon if he had been rude.
