Though I talk of the stage there was nothing at all dramatic to reward my attention, mine and Emily Morgan's.
To my imagination, excited by its idea of what Dacres Tottenham's courtship ought to be, the attentions he paid to Cecily were most humdrum.

He threw rings into buckets with her--she was good at that--and quoits upon the 'bull' board; he found her chair after the decks were swabbed in the morning and established her in it; he paced the deck with her at convenient times and seasons.

They were humdrum, but they were constant and cumulative.

Cecily took them with an even breath that perfectly matched.

There was hardly anything, on her part, to note--a little discreet observation of his comings and goings, eyes scarcely lifted from her book, and later just a hint of proprietorship, as the evening she came up to me on deck, our first night in the Indian Ocean.