The Ginger Tree Read Free

going to happen to me in the East. The breeze on the sea was making quite a noise by then and I almost wanted to shout into it, wildly. Of course I didn’t. Mr Davies would have thought I had gone mad. When I turned to him with a question he had not been watching the dolphins at all, but staring at me. I wish he wouldn’t do that.
    The ship moved into sunlight and it was very hot, even with the breeze. Mr Davies said ‘Oh my G—!’ Of course he is a sailor but I was still very startled he would say that in front of a lady. It made me look to where he was now looking. On the open piece of the bridge I could make out the Captain from his whiskers and he seemed to be watching us through binoculars, while the First Class cross deck beneath him was lined with passengers who must have been wakened from their naps by stewards and stewardesses telling them about the dolphins. I couldn’t see Mrs Carswell but I was sure she would hear about me being up at the bow of the ship alone with Mr Davies. However, I am writing this in my bunk by the light of the little lamp here and Mrs Carswell has not said anything so perhaps her being so aloof from most people on board will keep her from getting the news.
    SS Mooldera , at sea
January 17th, 1903
    Mrs Carswell and I are not speaking. She heard about Mr Davies and me from the Malacca Judge making one of his jokes at dinner. Mrs C never laughs at his jokes and this time she looked like thunder. Later in our cabin she said I had behaved like a fast woman and had I forgotten that I was betrothed to a gentleman of a very distinguished English family? I was cheeky, I suppose, I said yes I knew I was engaged but I was travelling to be married and not to enter a nunnery . She said she did not know what was to become of me after she left this ship at Hong Kong, for there was no one on board she could put in charge of me to Shanghai. I was very angry. I am twenty years old, if only just, and can look after myself, so I said why not get the whiskery Captain to look after me for the last part of the voyage? For a minute I thought Mrs Carswell was going to strike me. If she had I would have left the cabin and gone straight to the Purser to demand some other place to sleep. Maybe she saw in my eyes what I was thinking for she seemed to check the words that had been coming and said instead that her report to my mother on my behaviour on board the Mooldera would bring sorrow into an Edinburgh home. I said talking of reports made her sound like a headmistress. After that we both went into our bunks and drew the curtains. She did not begin to snore soon after the noise she makes moving about getting out of her clothes, so I expect that anger kept her awake as it did me.
    In the morning I felt uneasy about our quarrel and worried that she really would write Mama, which I did not want because things like I am a fast woman would be terribly hurtful. Mama is proper, too, though not nearly so strict in her thinking as Mrs C, to whom breathing is almost a sin. I wonder what she would think of her own snoring if she knew about it? Perhaps Mr Carswell has always been afraid to tell her?
    I got up and washed and so on with the curtains on the lower berth still drawn but with the feeling that I was being watched from behind them. Well if Mrs C was doing that now she knows about my corsets. However, she can’t say anything because if she does I will know she was peeping. Itwould be a little like someone watching to see if you close your eyes through prayers, if they see you don’t they haven’t closed their own, so they are unable to mention the matter. I only close mine when I am serious about my prayers, but not for the Minister’s prayers. In our church there were some people who kept their eyes shut for the blessing on King Edward and all the members of the Royal Family, but after that opened them.
    I could see the Island of Ceylon from the deck before I went down to breakfast but I wasn’t very interested