They come under my wing fast enough without being asked and
lots of them come in the night just when I've got in bed," he said. "I'm
a bit tired of people, Marcella. I've seen too much of them. I always
get two views of 'em, you know--inside and out. And the inside view is
very depressing."
He laughed at her grave face, but once again he had a sharp misgiving
about letting her go away alone. It seemed dangerous to turn her,
practically an anchorite, loose among so many people. He wished, now,
that he had let her brave the freezings of the saloon rather than the
thawings of the steerage. But she seemed so confident, so eager, that he
could say nothing to damp her spirits, only he was very glad, on going
with her to look at her cabin, to find that she was to have it to
herself. That, at any rate, prevented a too close intimacy that he
suddenly felt might be dangerous.
They found very little to say during the twenty minutes he had to spend
with her before the tender took him back to the shore. He was feeling
very saddened, and at the same time anxious to give her excellent,
fatherly advice, for he suddenly realized her abysmal ignorance when he
saw her standing smiling with an air of pleased expectancy among all
these strangers, waiting, as she had said, to love them all and take
them all under her wing.
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