hore. The burial service is different, and you will find the
other is so too. There is too much horizon at sea, too much distance
to talk of consent. Guardians and patents are too far off. As to
banns--who's going to say 'no' on board a vessel?"

"I cannot imagine that it would be a proper wedding," said she, shaking
her head.

"Do you mean in the sense of its being valid, my sweet?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"But you don't see that a parson's a parson everywhere. Whom God hath
joined--"

The steward entered the saloon at that moment. I called to him and
said politely, "Have you many passengers, steward?"

"Ay, sir, too many," he answered. "The steerage is pretty nigh
chock-ablock."

"Saloon passengers, I mean?"

"Every berth's hoccupied, sir."

"What sort of people are they, do you know? Any swells amongst them?"

"That, depends how they're viewed," he answered, with a cautious look
round and a slow smile; "if by themselves, they're all swells; if by
others--why!"

"I thought perhaps that you might have had something in the Colonial
bishopric way."

"No, sir, there's nothen in that way aboard. Plenty as needs it I
dessay. The language of some of them steerage chaps is something to
turn the black hairs of a monkey white. Talk of the vulgarity of
sailors!"

The glances of this steward were dry and shrewd, and his smile slow and
knowing; I chose therefore to ask him no more questions. But then,
substantially, he had told me what I wanted to gather, and secretly I
felt as much mortified and disappointed as though for days past I had
been thinking of nothing else than finding a parson on board ship at
sea and being married to Grace by him.

A little later on Mrs. Barstow came into the saloon and asked Grace to
accompany her on deck. My sweetheart put on her hat and jacket, and
the three of us went on to the poop. My first look was for a ship, and
I spied off the starboard bow a square of orange-coloured canvas; but
the vessel was going our way and was, therefore, of no use to us. The
ocean swept in a blank circle to that solitary point of sun-coloured
sail; but it was fine weather at last; whilst we were seated at lunch
the breeze had freshened and the sky cleared; the swell left by the
gale had sensibly flattened within the past hour, and the sea was
trembling and filled with the life of crisp green wrinkles running over
the light folds which flowed pleasantly out of the north; the mistiness