question to the smiling
bishop: "Who pays the boat?"

"The boat? Why--ha, ha!--that's the boat's lookout."

"It isn't," she laughed, but laughed so daintily and in a gayety so
modestly self-justified that the group approved and the Vicksburg man
asked her:

"Who ought to pay the boat?"

"We!" she cried. "All of us! It's in the Bible that we ought!" She
looked again to the bishop. "Ain't it?"

"Why, I don't recall any mention of this matter there."

"Nor of strangers?" she asked, "nor of sick folks?" and her demure
mirth, not flung at him or at any one, but quite to itself and for
itself, came again.

"Ah, that's another affair!" he rejoined. He felt her and Hugh, with
half the rest, saying to themselves, "It is not!" but was all the more
moved to continue: "My fair daughter, you prepare the way of the Lord.
Brethren and sisters, I want you to gather with me here as soon as
those yonder are through"--a backhanded toss indicated the children's
table, whose feasters showed no sign that they would ever be through
at all. "We must--every believer--and whosoever will--on this
passenger-deck--spend an hour--more if the spirit leads--in prayer
for this pestilence to be stayed." He fastened his gaze on Hugh; no
senator was present to overtop him now, and certainly this colt of John
Courteney's should not. Yet the largeness with which the colt's eyes
stared through and beyond him was significant to all.

"And we must do more!" he persisted.

"We shall," said Hugh.

"We must!" said the bishop; "we must beseech God for a spiritual
outpouring. We have on this boat the stranger of our own land and the
sick of our own tongue: the stranger to grace and the sick in soul, who
may be eternally lost before this boat has finished her trip; and as
much as the soul's worth outweighs the body's is it our first duty to
help them get religion!"

With her curls lowered nearly to the table Ramsey--ah, me!--laughed. Her
notes were as light as a perfume, but to the bishop all perfumes were
heavy. He turned to the actor. "Isn't that so, brother?"

"Oh, bishop, you know a lot better than I do."

"He doesn't," tinkled Ramsey, and, as the bishop swung back to her--"Do
you?" she ingratiatingly challenged him. "No, you don't! You know you
don't!"

The company would have laughed with her if only to save their face, and
when he made a very bright retort they laughed the heartier. They rose
with Hugh. Ramsey said she wished she knew again