Free Secrets at Sea by Richard Peck

’ightail it for the Duchess’s suite.”
    â€œBut where—”
    â€œI shall meself conduct you,” Lamont said grandly. “Now, if there are no further questions, I’ave other duties. Nigel keeps me on the ’op.”
    Then he was under the door and gone.
    We gazed at where he’d been.
    â€œWhy don’t boys ever want to be themselves? Why do boys always want to be somebody else?” asked Louise, who wanted to be Camilla.
    â€œHow can we go to tea like this?” Beatrice said. She looked down at herself.
    â€œFur is perfectly correct for travel,” I pointed out.
    â€œFor tea with a Duchess? A royal whatever?” Beatrice said. “I doubt it. I doubt it seriously.”
    Provoking girl, but she had a point.
    At quarter past four o’clock, probably, we were at the Duchess’s doors with our hearts in our mouths. Know-it-all Lamont had led us up and up through the ship to this very grand deck. The carpet was thick. The brass work gleamed like gold.
    The sounds of a string quartet echoed up from the Winter Garden. The humans were having tea there. Not Olive, of course. Olive was in bed.
    Still, we’d darted and scurried the whole way and hoped not to be noticed. After all, look at us.
    There was Beatrice in an elegant skirt of Swiss cotton, a handkerchief folded and gathered at the waist, though she has no waist. And look at Louise, in Camilla’s handkerchief with the embroidered violets, flounced, and a high Empire waistline. And I in white linen with a crocheted pink border, which is right for my coloring. We looked nice.
    Following Lamont’s patchy tail, we went in under the doors. It wasn’t easy in these skirts. On the other side in the Duchess’s front hall stood a very small mouse, hardly life-sized. She was hip-deep in the carpet and then some.
    â€œWhat names?” she inquired.
    â€œThe sisters Cranston,” Lamont said, “’Elena, Louise, and Beatrice.”
    The undersized mouse wrung her hands.“Oh, I shall never remember all that.”
    â€œNever mind.” Commanding Lamont waved a hand. “I’ll announce them. Show us the way to the Duchess!”
    How he got all this training in a single day I’ll never know. He may have learned better away from school. Besides, he wanted to be Nigel.
    We crept into the drawing room on all fours, not easy in these skirts. Beatrice tripped herself up and nosed into the Persian carpet, twice. The furniture was overstuffed cut velvet with tassels. The paneled walls were hung with paintings of female humans swinging in beribboned swings. So this was how royalty traveled. You wouldn’t know you were at sea. The room hardly swayed. A fire snapped and crackled in the marble hearth.
    Before it, outlined in flame, the Duchess of Cheddar Gorge, Mouse-in-Waiting to the daughter of the Queen, leaned upon her matchstick cane with the gold top. Firelight burnished the tiara between her ears. The room was enormous around her, but she filled it with her being.
    â€œThe sisters Cranston,” Lamont announced in a piping voice that crackled like the fire. “’Elena, Louise, and Beatrice.
    â€œCurtsy,” he muttered, as if we wouldn’t. We dropped three curtsies. We did our best.
    Lamont withdrew. The Duchess looked us over. She was shaky on her pins, but sharp-eyed. “What pretty skirts,” she deigned to say, looking away.
    Beside her on the brass fender of the hearth a tea was laid out: steaming thimbles and a variety of crumbs; tea cake and crumpet and cucumber sandwich, on polished British pennies. Bits of cheese, a creamy Bel Paese, tastefully arranged.
    We had soon settled on the hearthstones, the fire warm on our faces. Our skirts collapsed picturesquely around us. The undersized mouse and two more like her moved among us, serving us our tea. It was excellent. My crumb of tea cake had a raisin in it.
    It took the Duchess no time at all to