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By Root 1809 0

wealth in their bearing; the women—youthful both of them, and one perfectly handsome, as far as physical beauty went—were dressed richly, gaily, and absurdly out of character for the circumstances. Their bonnets with bright flowers, their velvet cloaks and silk dresses seemed better suited for park or promenade than for a damp packet-deck. The men were of low stature, plain, fat, and vulgar; the oldest, plainest, greasiest, broadest, I soon found was the husband—the bridegroom I suppose, for she was very young—of the beautiful girl. Deep was my amazement at this discovery; and deeper still when I perceived that, instead of being desperately wretched in such a union, she was gay even to giddiness. ‘Her laughter,’ I reflected, ‘must be the mere frenzy of despair.’ And even while this thought was crossing my mind, as I stood leaning quiet and solitary against the ship’s side, she came tripping up to me, an utter stranger, with a camp stool in her hand, and smiling a smile of which the levity puzzled and startled me, though it showed a perfect set of perfect teeth, she offered me the accommodation of this piece of furniture. I declined it, of course with all the courtesy I could put into my manner; she danced off heedless and lightsome. She must have been good-natured; but what had made her marry that individual, who was at least as much like an oil-barrel as a man?

The other lady-passenger, with the gentleman-companion, was quite a girl, pretty and fair; her simple print dress, untrimmed straw-bonnet, and large shawl, gracefully worn, formed a costume plain to quakerism:k yet, for her, becoming enough. Before the gentleman quitted her, I observed him throwing a glance of scrutiny over all the passengers, as if to ascertain in what company his charge would be left. With a most dissatisfied air did his eye turn from the ladies with the gay flowers: he looked at me, and then he spoke to his daughter, niece, or whatever she was; she also glanced in my direction, and slightly curled her short, pretty lip. It might be myself, or it might be my homely mourning-habit that elicited this mark of contempt; more likely both. A bell rang; her father (I afterwards knew that it was her father) kissed her and returned to land. The packet sailed.

Foreigners say that it is only English girls who can thus be trusted to travel alone, and deep is their wonder at the daring confidence of English parents and guardians. As for the ‘jeunes Miss,’ by some their intrepidity is pronounced masculine and ‘inconvenant,’ others regard them as the passive victims of an educational and theological system which wantonly dispenses with proper ‘surveillance.’ Whether this particular young lady was of the sort that can the most safely be left un-watched, I do not know: or rather did not then know; but it soon appeared that the dignity of solitude was not to her taste. She paced the deck once or twice backwards and forwards; she looked with a little sour air of disdain at the flaunting silks and velvets, and the bears which thereon danced attendance, and eventually she approached me and spoke.

‘Are you fond of a sea-voyage?’ was her question.

I explained that my fondness for a sea-voyage had yet to undergo the test of experience: I had never made one.

‘Oh how charming!’ cried she. ‘I quite envy you the novelty: first impressions, you know, are so pleasant. Now I have made so many, I quite forget the first: I am quite blaséel about the sea and all that.’

I could not help smiling.

‘Why do you laugh at me?’ she inquired, with a frank testiness that pleased me better than her other talk.

‘Because you are so young to be blasée about anything.’

‘I am seventeen’ (a little piqued).

‘You hardly look sixteen. Do you like travelling alone?’

‘Bah! I care nothing about it. I have crossed the Channel ten times, alone; but then I take care never to be long alone: I always make friends.’

‘You will scarcely make many friends this voyage, I think’ (glancing at the Watson-group, who were now laughing and making a great deal of noise on deck) .

‘Not of those odious men