Ashe had lived
through the night, but the attempt to move made her so miserably ill
that she was glad to sink again on her pillows.
The stewardess looked in with offers of tea and toast, the very idea
of which was simply dreadful, and pronounced the other lady "'orridly
ill, worse than you are, Miss," and the little girl "takin' on
dreadful in the h'upper berth." Of this fact Katy soon had audible
proof; for as her dizzy senses rallied a little, she could hear Amy in
the opposite stateroom crying and sobbing pitifully. She seemed to be
angry as well as sick, for she was scolding her poor mother in the
most vehement fashion.
"I hate being at sea," Katy heard her say. "I won't stay in this nasty
old ship. Mamma! Mamma! do you hear me? I won't stay in this ship! It
wasn't a bit kind of you to bring me to such a horrid place. It was very
unkind; it was cru-el. I want to go back, mamma. Tell the captain to
take me back to the land. Mamma, why don't you speak to me? Oh, I am so
sick and so very un-happy. Don't you wish you were dead? I do!"
And then came another storm of sobs, but never a sound from Mrs. Ashe,
who, Katy suspected, was too ill to speak. She felt very sorry for poor
little Amy, raging there in her high berth like some imprisoned
creature, but she was powerless to help her. She could only resign
herself to her own discomforts, and try to believe that somehow,
sometime, this state of things must mend,--either they should all get to
land or all go to the bottom and be drowned, and at that moment she
didn't care very much which it turned out to be.
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