yer?"

"Betcher bloomink heye Hi gawt it," said M'riar confidently, and
stooped as if she would pull out her wealth to show him, then and
there.

"Hin yer stawckin', eh?" the man said grinning.

That which had been in her mouth was spent for ticket, mostly, but a
little still was in her hand. "W'ere'd yer think Hi'd 'ave it?" she
asked scornfully. "Hin me roight hear?" Then she showed him what was
in her fist.

"Garn aboard," the man said, grinning.

"'Yn't I?" she asked briskly, and, seeing that Herr Kreutzer and his
Anna had passed quite out of sight into the ship's mysterious
interior, went up the gang-plank hurriedly, fearing to lose sight of
them. She did not realize that on an impulse she was starting to go a
quarter of the way around the earth. She only knew that love, love
irresistible, supreme, was drawing her to follow where they led. But
notwithstanding that it was pure love which drew her, she told
herself, as she went up the plank: "Hif they ketches me they'll 'eave
me hoverboard an' give me to th' fish, like's not."

Twenty minutes later the great ship was swinging out into the harbor.
In a dark passage on the steerage-deck cowered M'riar, for the first
time in her life afloat, and wondering why the motion of the vessel
seemed to make her wish to die; her white face, strained, frightened
eyes and trembling hands marking her, to the experienced,
unsympathetic eyes of the stern steerage-stewardess, an early victim
of seasickness.

"Hi, w'ere's yer ticket?" that fierce female cried, and M'riar showed
it to her, weakly, scarcely caring whether it entitled her to passage
or condemned her to expulsion from the ship by a sharp toss overside.

"Garn in there," said the stewardess, studying the ticket and its
bearer's symptoms simultaneously. "S'y, yer goin' ter be a nice sweet
passenger to 'ave hon board, now 'yn't yer?"

"Hi'm goin' ter die," said M'riar with firm conviction and not at all
appalled but rather pleased at thought of it.

"No such luck fer hus!" the stewardess replied. "Get _in_ there,
cawn't yer, before hit comes quite hon?"

So M'riar, long before the ship began to definitely feel even the
gentle Channel sea, was thrust into retirement, willy, nilly, and
immediately sought a bunk, absolutely without interest in anything,
even in her own sad fate. All she wished to do was die, at once, and
she had too little energy even to wish that very vividly. Miss Anna,
Herr Kreutzer and the fin