Has anything happened to the boat?"
"Ramsey!" "Missie!" lamented matron and servant again.
"Mother," with much dignity pleaded the twins.
"Oh, no," said the captain, "not to the boat."
"I want to stay and hear it," whined Ramsey, jerking up and down. "I
won't get scared."
"'T'u'd be de fust time sence she wuz bawn ef she did," audibly mused
the nurse, and Hugh said: "I believe that."
The girl stared round at him and then back at his father, her eyes wide
with merriment. "No Ramsey to the pilot-house with him if he can help
it!" she managed to say, and fell over her mother and nurse, down into
her chair and across its arm, her laughter jingling like a basket of
glass rolling down-stairs. Suddenly she hearkened. The captain was
speaking to her mother:
"Must you reach Loui'ville as quickly as you can?"
"Ah!--well? yes? we muz' do our possible. My 'usband he--Ramsey!"
The girl had turned face down in a play of collapse. "Nobody," she
piped, "finishes what he starts to tell!"
"Ho!" playfully retorted the mother, "an' you muz' go?--cannot wait?
Well, good night." But no one went.
Her mother turned again to the captain. "There is something veree
bad--on the boat?" Ramsey sat up alert.
The captain's reply was heard by none but her mother and the
grandfather, but evidently the twins knew whatever there was to tell.
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