a certain Miss Ingersoll, or perhaps her name only sounded like
that; for we called her the Eager Soul. And she was a pretty girl,
too--American pretty: Red hair--lots of blowy, crinkly red hair
that was always threatening to souse her face and ears; blue eyes
of the serious kind and a colour that gave us the impression that
she did exercises and could jab a punching bag. Indeed before we
met her, we began betting on the number of hours it would take her
to tell us that she took a cold plunge every morning. Henry expected
the statement on the second day; as a matter of fact it came late
on the first day! She was that kind. But there was no foolishness
about her. She was a nurse--a Red Cross nurse, and she made it
clear that she had no illusions about men; we suspected that she
had seen them cut up and knew their innermost secrets! Nevertheless
she was tremendously interesting, and because she, too, was from
the middle west, and possibly because she realized that we accepted
her for what she was, she often paced the rounds of the deck between
us. We teased her more or less about a young doctor of the Johns
Hopkins unit who sometimes hovered over her deck chair and a certain
Gilded Youth--every boat-load has its Gilded Youth--whose father
was president of so many industrial concerns, and the vice-president
of so many banks and trust companies that it was hard to look at
the boy without blinking at his gilding. Henry was betting on the
Gilded Youth; so the young doctor fell to me. For the first three
or four days during which we kept fairly close tab on their time,
the Doctor had the Gilded Youth beaten two hours to one. Henry
bought enough lemonade for me and smoking room swill of one sort
and another to start his little old Wichita ocean But it was plain
that the Gilded Youth interested her. And in a confidential moment
filled with laughter and chaff and chatter she told us why: "He's
patronizing me. I mean he doesn't know it, and he thinks I don't