She was singing, and her voice rose
clearly above the puff of the engine and the jabber below. There was a
chorus to the song, in which rough men and tired looking women joined.
The song was about home, and once in a while the girl unclasped her arms
and passed her hands over her eyes. Mae and Norman Mann looked at her
silently. "I suppose we don't know when we make pictures," said Mae.
"Don't we?" asked Norman pointedly. Mae looked very reprovingly out from
her white wraps at him, but he smiled back composedly and admiringly,
and drew her hand a trifle closer in his arm. And saucy Mae began to
feel in that sort of purring mood women come to when they drop the
bristling, ready-for-fight air with which they start on an acquaintance.
Perhaps, if the steamer had been a sailing-vessel, there would have
been no story to tell about Mae Madden, for a long line of evenings,
and girls singing songs, and hurricane decks by moonlight, are dangerous
things. But the vessel was a fast steamer, and was swiftly nearing land
again.
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