Chapter IX: The Girl From the Back Bay

Neale O’Neil tried to keep his eye on Tess and Dot, as he had promised Mr. Howbridge and Ruth, and he succeeded pretty well in doing so. But the children made their own friends very soon, and when Neale saw them conversing with some of the passengers, or making inquiries of the men working about the deck, he felt sure that they really could be in no mischief.

Just what they talked about, and all the wonderful things they learned of ships and shipgoing, they found little time to tell the other girls or Neale and Luke. But from a certain deeply tanned and quizzically smiling deckhand, whom they first met polishing brasses, Tess and Dot gained a deal of what Dot insisted upon calling “inflammation” about various things.

Some of this knowledge “spilled over,” as Neale said, at the cabin concert, without which no pleasant steamship voyage would be complete. Agnes saw that “Nalbro Hastings” was written at the head of the list of patronesses of this concert, and she sighed bitterly because her name or Ruth’s was not there at all. The charity for which the concert was held was worthy, and Ruth said that was enough. But it was not enough for her social-striving sister.

However, to plan for a concert and for its object was one thing; to find talent to offer a fairly interesting program, was another.

“And that stuck-up Nalbro Hastings will never get anybody to work for her in this show,” declared one girl to the equally outspoken Agnes.

“Is she really stuck-up?” queried Agnes.

“When I asked her a question just now she only mumbled and turned away,” declared the critical girl. “She’ll spoil the whole thing.”

“We won’t let her,” Ruth said quietly. “If they have used her name as patroness because her father is a big man, as they say he is, in the steamship company, it is not her fault. You know, she may be bashful.”

“Bashful!” exclaimed Agnes.

“And you see her name in all the Boston papers,” gasped the other girl. “She is just stuck-up.”

Ruth had no opportunity of speaking to Miss Hastings herself. The daughter of the shipowner did not eat in the cabin with the other first-class passengers. The very fact that she had her meals served to her in her stateroom seemed to support the idea that had got about pretty generally, that Nalbro Hastings was a very snobbish girl.

“I hope that idea will not serve to ruin the concert,” Ruth said more than once.

“I don’t know where she expects to find her talent,” sniffed Agnes. Then, twinkling: “She hasn’t asked me to sing or dance.”

“I know a couple of stokers who do a regular double-shuffle,” said Neale. “Caught ’em at it on one of the ventilators, below. Say! No stage dancer ever turned ’em off better.”

“Stokers! Grimy coal-passers?” sniffed Agnes.

“Why wouldn’t it be a good thing—and a novel thing, too—to get the talent for this concert from the steerage, stokehole, and forecastle? Usually the concert is given by the cabin passengers and the workmen aboard listen out on the edges of the crowd. Why not let the poor fellows give the concert and then everybody in the first and second cabins can be asked to pay a round sum for tickets.”

Agnes said not a word, but Neale threw up his hat.

“I’m going to ask those fellows——”

“No, no!” cried Ruth. “You have no right to do anything of the kind. The suggestion should be made to Miss Hastings.”

“Well, I guess nobody will dare do that,” said Agnes, and settled back into her chair with more satisfaction.

Neale went off at once, however, without saying another word to the sisters. He had noticed Nalbro Hastings leaning against the rail, forward. He marched up to her and pulled off his cap. Miss Hastings looked rather startled and Neale wondered if she was bashful, as Ruth had suggested.

“Beg pardon, Miss Hastings,” said the boy, quite untroubled himself, “have you got all the talent you need for the concert?”

The young girl (she was not far from Agnes’ age, after all) stared at him. Her lips moved, but at first no sound came forth. She really looked scared.

“For if you haven’t,” Neale O’Neil went on to say, “I’ve found a couple of fellows who might help out. If you are going to have sort of a vaudeville entertainment, I mean.”

“Would—would that be thuitable, do you thuppoth?” lisped Nalbro Hastings. “I couldn’t imagine what thort of conthert would be exthpected, don’t you know.”

“Oh, my aunt!” thought Neale. “She lisps. Wow!”

Aloud he said, keeping a perfectly straight face: “Who have you got already and what do they do?”

“I—I haven’t done a thing,” admitted Miss Hastings, in evident desperation.

“Whew!” whistled Neale.

“I—I don’t know what to do,” she added. “I—I can’t talk to people, Mithter—er——”

“My name’s Neale O’Neil. I’m with the Kenways and Mr. Howbridge.”

“Oh, with that pretty, pretty Agneth Kenway?”

“Don’t tell her that!” commanded Neale. “She is proud enough already. And she has a deadly crush on you, Miss Hastings.”

“On me?” Miss Hastings smiled; then, as her upper lip began to lift she grew suddenly sober again. “And—and I can’t talk to her—or to any one!” she groaned.

“But you are talking all right,” said Neale, amazed.

“But you made me. And I have to pick my wordth. Oh! Don’t you thee!” wailed the girl from the Back Bay. “My—my—oh, dear me, my teeth——”

“Lost ’em?” asked Neale, with quick sympathy. “But you can get more.” Then he grinned suddenly. “Mr. Howbridge has an extra set; maybe he would lend them.”

“Oh!” gasped Miss Hastings. Then she actually laughed, and in laughing she showed a little red gap in her upper front teeth.

“Don’t—don’t!” she begged. “I know you are funny. You have thuch good timeth with that Mith Kenway. But pleathe don’t make me laugh. I had a dreadful acthident latht fall. Wath thrown from my horthe in the Fenway. The dental thurgeon promithed to have the plate ready before the _Horridole_ thailed. But it didn’t come to the dock. Now I have thent a wireleth meththage——Oh! Ithn’t it terrible?”

“It’s a shame,” agreed Neale, but with dancing eyes. “And can’t you have a concert because of that?”

“Well, I thertainly can’t take part in one,” she said rather tartly.

“You’d bring down the house if you did,” giggled Neale O’Neil. “But never mind. I’ll help you. Have you talked with the other members of the committee?”

“Not very much,” admitted Miss Hastings. “I—I’ve had to talk with my handkerthief in front of my mouth and I am not thure that they know what I have thaid. Maybe they think I’ve got the flu,” and she began to laugh, herself, now.

“That’s right! Cheer up,” said Neale, who would be friendly with the most self-conscious or bashful person in existence, and found that Miss Hastings was pretty human after all.

He told her about his “Caruso” and the dancing team from the stokehole. Nalbro Hastings seized upon the originality of the idea which Ruth Kenway had expressed.

“And there are two little girlth—Here they come now,” said Miss Hastings. “I heard them thinging—the cuteth little thingth.”

“Why, that’s Tess and Dot Kenway,” declared Neale, in surprise.

“Call them over, pleath,” commanded the Back Bay girl. “Athk them to thing that thong about ‘Dooley.’”

“That’s a new one on me,” Neale declared, beckoning to Tess and Dot. “What’s all this about the new song you’ve learned?” he asked the sisters, when they came near. “This is Miss Hastings, Tess and Dot. You want to know her. She’s a nice girl, only she’s made a vow that she won’t speak till she gets to St. Sergius and the parcel post catches up to us.”

“Oh, Mithter O’Neil!” murmured the Back Bay girl.

“She speaks some,” said Tess curiously.

“Let’s hear the song—and where did you learn it?” Neale said.

“Our friend, Mr. Billie Bowling, learned it us,” said Dot, referring to the deckhand before mentioned. “Do you really want to hear it?”

“Sure,” said Neale. “Is it good enough to sing at a concert?”

“Of course,” said Tess scornfully. “I’d sing it at a Sunday school concert.”

But after Neale heard it, and had recovered from his paroxysm of laughter, he said breathlessly:

“Don’t let Ruth hear of your singing that in Sunday school. But it will be a knockout at this cabin concert, Miss Hastings.”

“It will! It will,” agreed the Back Bay girl. “You muthtn’t tell anybody about it, children. You can rehearthe in my thtateroom. Oh! You tell them, Mr. O’Neil.”

And Neale did that.

What made Agnes mad—and she admitted it to any of the party who would listen—was the bold way in which Neale did it! To think of his walking right up to Nalbro Hastings and talking to her as though she was—was—well! Just common folks!

“She is,” growled Neale, at last getting rather tired of Agnes’ complainings. “She doesn’t claim to be any different from other people.”

“I’d like to know!” was his friend’s scornful remark. “And with her nose stuck up the way it is?”

“Nature did that; she’s not to blame,” declared Neale soberly.

“Indeed!”

“Come along, Aggie, and I’ll introduce you,” chuckled Neale. “Although she did tell me she didn’t want to meet anybody aboard ship.”

“The stuck-up thing!” For Agnes was as angry now as the other girls who considered Nalbro Hastings snobbish. “She never would have spoken to you if you weren’t a very good-looking boy, Neale O’Neil. And you fell right down before her and adored.”

“Oh! I never!” gasped the boy, hotly.

“Don’t you deny it. Her money, and everything——”

That settled it with Neale. He tramped away in the heat of anger. And because of what Agnes said, he took delight in keeping the secret of Nalbro Hastings’ retirement to himself.

However, because it was her duty, Miss Hastings met with the members of the concert committee—the “patronesses,” and arranged the program. Ruth’s suggestion, relayed through Neale O’Neil, governed Miss Hastings in choosing the talent. Sailors, stokers, engine-room men, and stewards were examined for talent.

Nor did Miss Hastings forget Tess and Dot Kenway. As Neale O’Neil said in his most vigorous language, their song was bound to be “a knockout.”