“Now, don’t you worry at all,” they reassured Mrs. Maurier, “we can do just as we did yesterday: it will be more fun than ever, that way. Dorothy and I can open cans and warm things. We can get along just as well without a steward as with one. Can’t we, Dorothy?”

“It will be like a picnic,” Miss Jameson agreed. “Of course, the men will have to help, too,” she added, looking at Pete with her pale humorless eyes.

Mrs. Maurier submitted, dogging them with her moaning fatuousness while Mrs. Wiseman and Miss Jameson and the niece opened cans and heated things, smearing dreadfully about the galley with grease and juices and blood from the niece’s thumb; opening, at Mark Frost’s instigation, a can labeled Beans, which turned out to be green string beans.

But they got coffee made at last, and breakfast was finally not very late. As they had said, it was like a picnic, though there were no ants, as the Semitic man pointed out just before he was ejected from the kitchen.

“We’ll open a can of them for you,” his sister offered briskly.

Besides, there was still plenty of grapefruit.