The View from Castle Rock

the girl pushes him and turns him around and he laughs at her. She is all dressed up like a young lady, with bows in her hair. Her face is lit with enjoyment, her cheeks are glowing like lanterns, and she treats Walter with great familiarity, as if she had got hold of a large toy.
    “That lad is your friend?” says Mr. Suter.
    “No. He is my husband’s brother.”
    The girl is laughing quite helplessly, as she and Walter-through her heedlessness-have almost knocked down another couple in the dance. She is not able to stand up for laughing, and Walter has to support her. Then it appears that she is not laughing but in a fit of coughing and every time the fit seems ready to stop she laughs and gets it started again. Walter is holding her against himself, half-carrying her to the rail.
    “There is one lass that will never have a child to her breast,” says Mr. Suter, his eyes flitting to the sucking child before resting again on the girl. “I doubt if she will live long enough to see much of America. Does she not have anyone to look after her? She should not have been allowed to dance.”

    He stands up so that he can keep the girl in view as Walter holds her by the rail.
    “There, she has got stopped,” he says. “No hemorrhaging. At least not this time.”
    Agnes does not pay attention to most people, but she can sense things about any man who is interested in her, and she can see now that he takes a satisfaction in the verdict he has passed on this young girl. And she understands that this must be because of some condition of his own-that he must be thinking that he is not so badly off, by comparison.
    There is a cry at the rail, nothing to do with the girl and Walter. Another cry, and many people break off dancing, hurrying to look at the water. Mr. Suter rises and goes a few steps in that direction, following the crowd, then turns back.
    “A whale,” he says. “They are saying there is a whale to be seen off the side.”
    “You stay here,” cries Agnes in an angry voice, and he turns to her in surprise. But he sees that her words are meant for Young James, who is on his feet.
    “This is your lad then?” says Mr. Suter as if he has made a remarkable discovery. “May I carry him over to have a look?”

    And that is how Mary-happening to raise her face in the crush of passengers-beholds Young James, much amazed, being carried across the deck in the arms of a hurrying stranger, a pale and determined though slyly courteous-looking dark-haired man who is surely a foreigner. A child-stealer, or child-murderer, heading for the rail.
    She gives so wild a shriek that anybody would think she was in the Devil’s clutches herself, and people make way for her as they would do for a mad dog.

    “Stop thief, stop thief,” she is crying. “Take the boy from him. Catch him. James. James. Jump down!”
    She flings herself forward and grabs the child’s ankles, yanking him so that he howls in fear and outrage. The man bearing him nearly topples over but doesn’t give him up. He holds on and pushes at Mary with his foot.
    “Take her arms,” he shouts, to those around them. He is short of breath. “She is in a fit.”
    Andrew has pushed his way in, among people who are still dancing and people who have stopped to watch the drama. He manages somehow to get hold of Mary and Young James and to make clear that the one is his son and the other his sister and that it is not a question of fits. Young James throws himself from his father to Mary and then begins kicking to be let down.
    All is shortly explained with courtesies and apologies from Mr. Suter-through which Young James, quite recovered to himself, cries out over and over again that he must see the whale. He insists upon this just as if he knew perfectly well what a whale was.
    Andrew tells him what will happen if he does not stop his racket.
    “I had just stopped for a few minutes’ talk with your wife, to ask her if she was well,” the surgeon says. “I did not take time to bid her good-bye, so you must do it for me.”

    There are whales for Young James to see all day and for everybody to see who can be bothered. People grow tired of looking at them.
    “Is there anybody but a fine type of rascal would sit down to talk with a woman that had her bosoms bared,” says Old James, addressing the sky.

    Then he quotes from the Bible regarding whales.
    “
There go the ships and there is that leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein. That crooked