There was a heavy sea running, and each approaching wave looked big enough to engulf the vessel, but as the mass of moving water reached the bow, the ship rose on it, light and graceful as a bird, shook off the flying spray as a cat shakes her fur after an unwelcome bath, and again drove forward as steady and with as little perceptible motion as a railway train.
Shirley was a fairly good sailor and this kind of weather did not bother her in the least, but when it got very rough she could not bear the rolling and pitching and then all she was good for was to lie still in her steamer chair with her eyes closed until the water was calmer and the pitching ceased.
"It's pretty windy here, Shirley," shouted Jefferson, steadying himself against a stanchion.

"Don't you want to walk a little ?" He had begun to call her by her first name quite naturally, as if it were a matter of course.

Indeed, their relations had come to be more like those of brother and sister than anything else.

Shirley was too much troubled over the news from home to have a mind for other things, and in her distress she had turned to Jefferson for advice and help as she would have looked to an elder brother.

He had felt this impulse to confide in him and consult his opinion and it had pleased him more than he dared betray.