D. B. found means to entertain them at great
length with long discussions upon certain subjects of curiously
diversified character. Upon their first visit she elected to talk
upon the Alps mountains. The Sunday following it was
bacteriology; on the next Wednesday it was crystals; while for two
hours during their next visit to the station, Condy and Blix were
obliged to listen to K. D. B.'s interminable discourse on the
origin, history, and development of the kingdom of Denmark. Condy
was dumfounded.
"I never met such a person, man or woman, in all my life. Talk
about education! Why, I think she knows everything!"
"In Defiance of Authority" soon began to make good progress, but
Condy, once launched upon technical navigation, must have Captain
Jack at his elbow continually, to keep him from foundering. In
some sea novel he remembered to have come across the expression
"garboard streak," and from the context guessed it was to be
applied to a detail of a vessel's construction. In an unguarded
moment he had written that his schooner's name "was painted in
showy gilt letters upon her garboard streak."
"What's the garboard streak, Condy?" Blix had asked, when he had
read the chapter to her.
"That's where they paint her name," he declared promptly. "I
don't know exactly, but I like the sound of it."
But the next day, when he was reading this same chapter to Captain
Jack, the latter suddenly interrupted with an exclamation as of
acute physical anguish.
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