After dinner, nature avenged¹ herself in the young men for their vigils of the night before, when they had stayed up so late, parting with friends, that they had found themselves early risers without having been abed. They both slept so long that Dunham, leaving Staniford to a still unfinished nap, came on deck between five and six o'clock.  
Lydia was there, wrapped against the freshening breeze in a red knit shawl, and seated on a stool in the waist of the ship, in the Evangeline attitude, and with the wistful, Evangeline look in her face, as she gazed out over the far-weltering sea-line, from which all trace of the shore had vanished. She seemed to the young man very interesting, and he approached her with that kindness for all other women in his heart which the lover feels in absence from his beloved, and with a formless sense that some retribution was due her from him for the roughness with which Staniford had surmised² her natural history. Women had always been dear and sacred to him; he liked, beyond most young men, to be with them; he was forever calling upon them, getting introduced to them, waiting upon them, inventing little services for them, corresponding with them, and wearing himself out in their interest. It is said that women do not value men of this sort so much as men of some other sorts. It was long, at any rate, before Dunham—whom people always called Charley Dunham—found the woman who thought him more lovely than every other woman pronounced him; and naturally Miss Hibbard was the most exacting³ of her sex. She required all those offices which Dunham delighted to render, and many besides: being an invalid⁴, she needed devotion. She had refused Dunham before going out to Europe with her mother, and she had written to take him back after she got there. He was now on his way to join her in Dresden, where he hoped that he might marry her, and be perfectly⁶ sacrificed to her ailments⁷. She only lacked poverty in order to be thoroughly⁸ displeasing⁹ to most men; but Dunham had no misgiving¹⁰ save in regard to her money; he wished she had no money.
 
“A good deal more motion, isn't there?” he said to Lydia, smiling sunnily as he spoke¹¹, and holding his hat with one hand. “Do you find it unpleasant?”
 
“No,” she answered, “not at all. I like it.”
 
“Oh, there isn't enough swell¹² to make it uncomfortable, yet,” asserted Dunham, looking about to see if there were not something he could do for her. “And you may turn out a good sailor. Were you ever at sea before?”
 
“No; this is the first time I was ever on a ship.”
 
“Is it possible!” cried Dunham; he was now fairly at sea for the first time himself, though by virtue¹³ of his European associations he seemed to have made many voyages. It appeared to him that if there was nothing else he could do for Lydia, it was his duty to talk to her. He found another stool, and drew it up within easier conversational¹⁴ distance. “Then you've never been out of sight of land before?”
 
“No,” said Lydia.
 
“That's very curious—I beg your pardon; I mean you must find it a great novelty.”
 
“Yes, it's very strange,” said the girl, seriously. “It looks like the Flood. It seems as if all the rest of the world was drowned.”
 
Dunham glanced round the vast horizon. “It is like the Flood. And it has that quality, which I've often noticed in sublime¹⁵ things, of seeming to be for this occasion only.”
 
“Yes?” said Lydia.
 
“Why, don't you know? It seems as if it must be like a fine sunset, and would pass in a few minutes. Perhaps we feel that we can't endure sublimity¹⁶ long, and want it to pass.”
 
“I could look at it forever,” replied Lydia.
 
Dunham turned to see if this were young-ladyish rapture¹⁷, but perceived that she was affecting nothing. He liked seriousness, for he was, with a great deal of affectation for social purposes, a very sincere person. His heart warmed more and more to the lonely girl; to be talking to her seemed, after all, to be doing very little for her, and he longed to be of service. “Have you explored our little wooden world, yet?” he asked, after a pause.
 
Lydia paused too. “The ship?” she asked presently. “No; I've only been in the cabin, and here; and this morning,” she added, conscientiously¹⁸, “Thomas showed me the cook's galley¹⁹,—the kitchen.”
 
“You've seen more than I have,” said Dunham. “Wouldn't you like to go forward, to the bow, and see how it looks there?”
 
“Yes, thank you,” answered Lydia, “I would.”
 
She tottered²⁰ a little in gaining her feet, and the wind drifted her slightness a step or two aside. “Won't you take my arm, perhaps?” suggested Dunham.
 
“Thank you,” said Lydia, “I think I can get along.” But after a few paces, a lurch²¹ of the ship flung her against Dunham's side; he caught her hand, and passed it through his arm without protest from her.
 
“Isn't it grand?” he asked triumphantly²², as they stood at the prow²³, and rose and sank with the vessel's careering plunges²⁴. It was no gale²⁵, but only a fair wind; the water foamed²⁶ along the ship's sides, and, as her bows descended²⁷, shot forward in hissing²⁸ jets of spray; away on every hand flocked the white caps. “You had better keep my arm, here.” Lydia did so, resting her disengaged hand on the bulwarks²⁹, as she bent³⁰ over a little on that side to watch the rush of the sea. “It really seems as if there were more of a view here.”
 
“It does, somehow,” admitted Lydia.
 
“Look back at the ship's sails,” said Dunham. The swell and press of the white canvas seemed like the clouds of heaven swooping³¹ down upon them from all the airy heights. The sweet wind beat in their faces, and they laughed in sympathy, as they fronted it. “Perhaps the motion is a little too strong for you here?” he asked.
 
“Oh, not at all!” cried the girl.
 
He had done something for her by bringing her here, and he hoped to do something more by taking her away. He was discomfited³², for he was at a loss what other attention to offer. Just at that moment a sound made itself heard above the whistling of the cordage and the wash of the sea, which caused Lydia to start and look round.
 
“Didn't you think,” she asked, “that you heard hens?”
 
“Why, yes,” said Dunham. “What could it have been? Let us investigate.”
 
He led the way back past the forecastle and the cook's galley, and there, in dangerous proximity³³ to the pots and frying pans, they found a coop with some dozen querulous and meditative³⁴ fowl³⁵ in it.
 
“I heard them this morning,” said Lydia. “They seemed to wake me with their crowing, and I thought—I was at home!”
 
“I'm very sorry,” said Dunham, sympathetically. He wished Staniford were there to take shame to himself for denying sensibility to this girl.
 
The cook, smoking a pipe at the door of his galley, said, “Dey won't trouble you much, miss. Dey don't gen'ly last us long, and I'll kill de roosters first.”
 
“Oh, come, now!” protested Dunham. “I wouldn't say that!” The cook and Lydia stared at him in equal surprise.
 
“Well,” answered the cook, “I'll kill the hens first, den⁵. It don't make any difference to me which I kill. I dunno but de hens is tenderer.” He smoked in a bland³⁶ indifference³⁷.
 
“Oh, hold on!” exclaimed Dunham, in repetition of his helpless protest.
 
Lydia stooped down to make closer acquaintance with the devoted³⁸ birds. They huddled³⁹ themselves away from her in one corner of their prison, and talked together in low tones of grave mistrust. “Poor things!” she said. As a country girl, used to the practical ends of poultry⁴⁰, she knew as well as the cook that it was the fit and simple destiny of chickens to be eaten, sooner or later; and it must have been less in commiseration⁴¹ of their fate than in self-pity and regret for the scenes they recalled that she sighed. The hens that burrowed⁴² yesterday under the lilacs in the door-yard; the cock that her aunt so often drove, insulted and exclamatory, at the head of his harem, out of forbidden garden bounds; the social groups that scratched and descanted lazily about the wide, sunny barn doors; the anxious companies seeking their favorite perches⁴³, with alarming outcries, in the dusk of summer evenings; the sentinels answering each other from farm to farm before winter dawns, when all the hills were drowned in snow, were of kindred with these hapless prisoners.
 
Dunham was touched at Lydia's compassion⁴⁴. “Would you like—would you like to feed them?” he asked by a happy inspiration. He turned to the cook, with his gentle politeness: “There's no objection to our feeding them, I suppose?”
 
“Laws, no!” said the cook. “Fats 'em up.” He went inside, and reappeared with a pan full of scraps⁴⁵ of meat and crusts of bread.
 
“Oh, I say!” cried Dunham. “Haven't you got some grain, you know, of some sort; some seeds, don't you know?”
 
“They will like this,” said Lydia, while the cook stared in perplexity. She took the pan, and opening the little door of the coop flung the provision inside. But the fowls⁴⁶ were either too depressed⁴⁷ in spirit to eat anything, or they were not hungry; they remained in their corner, and merely fell silent, as if a new suspicion had been roused in their unhappy breasts.
 
“Dey'll come, to it,” observed the cook.
 
Dun............