THE RED RUGS OF TARSUS
then fell away, I imagined my baby falling into the water. First touch of maternal worry, which I suppose I shall now have for the rest of my life. The lieutenant-commander took the baby. Two ensigns carried me up. Once on that ship I was at home.
The captain was waiting to greet the youngest girl who had ever been entertained on the North Carolina. Scrappie was fixed up in an officer's bunk, where I knew she would sleep just as placidly as ashore until it was time for her next meal. I was invited into the wardroom. A leather arm-chair and – I ought to write a cup of tea, but it was n't – awaited me. The officers, of course, knew lots of my friends. My mind went waltzing back to dancing days in the Armory and to my birthday dinners at the old Bellevue after Army-Navy games. I was living in the anti-Herbert period, when parsons and missionaries and Turkey and babies did not claim me.
There was a soft knock at the steel door that
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