For of what other person could they be speaking?
The steward added with a gloomy sort of fairness: "But she will be before I bring the dishes in.

She never gives that sort of trouble.

That she doesn't." "No.

Not in that way," Mr.Franklin agreed, and then both he and the steward, after glancing at Powell--the stranger to the ship--said nothing more.
But this had been enough to rouse his curiosity.

Curiosity is natural to man.