Christopher and Columbus

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Book: Read Christopher and Columbus for Free Online
Authors: Elizabeth von Arnim
that."
    "I thought you must be relations," said the
stewardess.
    "We are," said Anna-Rose. "We're
twins."
    The stewardess stared. "Twins what of?" she asked.
    "What of?" echoed Anna-Rose. "Why, of each other,
of course."
    "I meant relations of the Captain's," said the
stewardess shortly, eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.
    "You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind,"
said Anna-Felicitas. "He is no relation of ours."
    "You're not even friends, then?" asked the
stewardess, pausing to stare round at them at a turn in the stairs
as they followed her down arm-in-arm.
    "Of course we're friends," said Anna-Rose with
some heat. "Do you suppose we quarrel?"
    "No, I didn't suppose you quarrelled with the
Captain," said the stewardess tartly. "Not on board this
ship anyway."
    She didn't know which of the two she disliked most, the
short girl or the long girl.
    "You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain," said
Anna-Felicitas gently. "Obsessed!" repeated the
stewardess, tossing her head. She was unacquainted with the word,
but instantly suspected it of containing a reflection on her
respectability. "I've been a widow off and on for ten
years now," she said angrily, "and I guess it would take
more than even the Captain to obsess
me
."
    They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room,
and the stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before
indignantly leaving them and going upstairs again to say, "If
you're friends, what do you want to know his name for,
then?"
    "Whose name?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
    "The Captain's," said the stewardess.
    "We don't want to know the Captain's name,"
said Anna-Felicitas patiently. "We don't want to know
anything about the Captain."
    "Then--" began the stewardess. She restrained herself,
however, and merely bitterly remarking: "That gentleman
was
the Captain," went upstairs and left them.
    Anna-Rose was the first to recover. "You see we took your
advice," she called up after her, trying to soften her heart,
for it was evident that for some reason her heart was hardened, by
flattery. "You
told
us to ask the Captain."
CHAPTER IV
    In their berths that night before they went to sleep, it
occurred to them that perhaps what was the matter with the
stewardess was that she needed a tip. At first, with their recent
experiences fresh in their minds, they thought that she was
probably passionately pro-Ally, and had already detected all those
Junkers in their past and accordingly couldn't endure them.
Then they remembered how Aunt Alice had said, "You will have
to give your stewardess a little something."
    This had greatly perturbed them at the time, for up to then they
had been in the easy position of the tipped rather than the
tippers, and anyhow they had no idea what one gave stewardesses.
Neither, it appeared, had Aunt Alice; for, on being questioned, she
said vaguely that as it was an American boat they were going on she
supposed it would have to be American money, which was dollars, and
she didn't know much about dollars except that you divided them
by four and multiplied them by five, or else it was the other way
about; and when, feeling still uninformed, they had begged her to
tell them why one did that, she said it was the quickest way of
finding out what a dollar really was, and would they mind not
talking any more for a little while because her head ached.
    The tips they had seen administered during their short lives had
all been given at the end of things, not at the beginning; but
Americans, Aunt Alice told them, were in some respects, in spite of
their talking English, different, and perhaps they were different
just on this point and liked to be tipped at both ends. Anna-Rose
wanted to crane out her head and call up to Anna-Felicitas and ask
her whether she didn't think that might be so, but was afraid
of disturbing the people in the opposite berths.
    Anna-Felicitas was in the top berth on their side of the cabin,
and Anna-Rose as the elder and accordingly as she

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