“You don’t smoke? Why don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Jenny replied, “I just don’t.”
“Look around and see if Eva’s got some somewhere.” The niece raised her head. “Go on: look in her things, she won’t mind.”
Jenny hunted for cigarettes in a soft blonde futility. “Pete’s got some,” she remarked after a time. “He bought twenty packages just before we left town, to bring on the boat.”
“Twenty packages? Good Lord, where’d he think we were going? He must have been scared of shipwreck or something.”
“I guess so.”
“Gabriel’s pants,” the niece said. “That’s all he brought, was it? Just cigarettes? What did you bring?”
“I brought a comb,” Jenny dragged her little soiled dress over her head. Her voice was muffled, “and some rouge.” She shook out her drowsy gold hair and let the dress fall to the floor. “Pete’s got some, though,” she repeated, thrusting the dress beneath the dressing table with her foot.
“I know,” the niece rejoined, “and so has Mr. Fairchild. And so has the steward, if Mark Frost hasn’t borrowed ’em all. And I saw the captain smoking one, too. But that’s not doing me any good.”
“No,” agreed Jenny placidly. Her undergarment was quite pink, enveloping her from shoulder to knee with ribbons and furbelows. She loosened a few of these and stepped sweetly and rosily out of it, casting it also under the table.
“You aren’t going to leave “em there, are you?” the niece asked. “Why don’t you put ’em on the chair?”
“Mrs.—Mrs. Wiseman puts hers on the chair.”
“Well, you got here first: why don’t you take it? Or hang ’em on those hooks behind the door?”
“Hooks?” Jenny looked at the door. “Oh. . . . They'll be all right there, I guess.” She stripped off her stockings and
