d that plaid out of the hold-all. No, I won't have a biscuit
now; I prefer to wait till we get on terra firma again."

Irene, sitting warmly wrapped up on her deck-chair, watched the white
cliffs of Dover recede from her gaze as the vessel left the port and
steamed out into the Channel. It was the last of "Old England," and she
knew that much time must elapse before she would see the shores of her
birthplace again. What would greet her in the foreign country to which
she was going? New sights, new sounds, new interests--perhaps new
friends? The thought of it all was an exhilaration. Others might seem
sad at a break with former associations, but as for herself she was
starting a fresh life, and she meant to get every scrap of enjoyment out
of it that was practically possible.

The stewardess had prophesied correctly when she described the voyage as
"choppy." The steamer certainly pitched and tossed in a most
uncomfortable fashion, and it was only owing to the comparative
steadiness of her seat amidships that Irene escaped that most wretched
of complaints, _mal de mer_. She sat very still, with rather white
cheeks, and refused Vincent's offers of biscuits and chocolates: her
sole salvation, indeed, was not to look at the heaving sea, but to keep
her eyes fixed upon the magazine which she made a pretense of reading.
Fortunately the Dover-Calais crossing is short, and, before Neptune had
claimed her as one of his victims, they were once more in smooth waters
and steaming into harbor.

Then again the kaleidoscope turned, and the crowd of passengers
remingled and walked over gangways, and along platforms and up steep
steps, and jostled through the Customs, and said "_Rien a declarer_" to
the officials, who peeped inside their bags to find tea or tobacco, and
had their luggage duly chalked, and showed their passports once more,
and finally, after a bewildering half-hour of bustle and hustle, found
themselves, with all their belongings intact, safely in the train for
Paris. Irene had caught brief glimpses of the child whom she named
"Little Flaxen," whose mother, in a state of collapse, had been almost
carried off the vessel, but revived when she was on dry land again: a
maid was in close attendance, and two porters were stowing their piles
of hand-luggage inside a specially reserved compartment. "The cross lady
won't be boxed up with them at any rate," said Irene. "I saw her get in
lower down the train."

It was dark when