aint, when I lived
with the _jeunesse des ecoles_; and her comment on this was simply:
"Well, he had better have come out for her!"

"Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if, she might change
her mind at the last moment."

"About her marriage?

"About sailing. But she won't change now."

Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. "Well, _are_
you going?"

"Yes, I shall go"--he was finally at peace about it. "I've got my
telegram."

"Oh your telegram!"--I ventured a little to jeer.

"That charming girl's your telegram."

He gave me a look, but in the dusk I couldn't make out very well what it
conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. "My news isn't
particularly satisfactory. I'm going for _you_."

"Oh you humbug!" she replied. But she was of course delighted.

CHAPTER II

People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves
into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive
or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a hole
and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in comparison
rare men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as became an old
sailor, and so, it seemed, were Miss Mavis's, for when I mounted to the
deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone, in the stern of
the ship, her eyes on the dwindling continent. It dwindled very fast for
so big a place. I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid
the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off;
we talked a little about the boat, our fellow-passengers and our
prospects, and then I said: "I think you mentioned last night a name I
know--that of Mr. Porterfield."

"Oh no I didn't!" she answered very straight while she smiled at me
through her closely-drawn veil.

"Then it was your mother."

"Very likely it was my mother." And she continued to smile as if I ought
to have known the difference.

"I venture to allude to him because I've an idea I used to know him," I
went on.

"Oh I see." And beyond this remark she appeared to take no interest; she
left it to me to make any connexion.

"That is if it's the same one." It struck me as feeble to say nothing
more; so I added "My Mr. Porterfield was called David."

"Well, so is ours." "Ours" affected me as clever.

"I suppose I shall see him again if he's to meet you at Liverpool," I
continued.

"Well, it w