ey
dismissed the two who were now going forth cheerfully, uncomplainingly,
and with their blessing, but all the same it was not pleasant; and Mrs.
Young shed some quiet tears in the privacy of her own room, and her
husband looked very serious as he strode down the Southampton docks
after saying good-by to his children on board the steamer.

Imogen had never been on a great sea-going vessel before, and it struck
her as being very crowded and confused as well as bewilderingly big. She
stood clutching her bags and bundles nervously and feeling homesick and
astray while farewells and greetings went on about her, and the people
who were going and those who were to stay behind seemed mixed in an
inextricable tangle on the decks. Then a bell rang, and gradually the
groups separated; those who were not going formed themselves into a
black mass on the pier; there was a great fluttering of handkerchiefs, a
plunge of the screw, and the steamer was off.

Lionel, who had been seeing to the baggage, now appeared, and took
Imogen down to her stateroom, advising her to get out all her warm
things and make ready for a rough night.

"There's quite a sea on outside," he remarked. "We're in for a rolling
if not for a pitching."

"Lion!" cried Imogen, indignantly. "Do you mean to say that you suppose
I'm going to be sick,--I, a Devonshire girl born and bred, who have
lived by the sea all my life? Never!"

"Time will show," was the oracular response. "Get the rugs out, any way,
and your brushes and combs and things, and advise Miss What-d'-you-call-her
to do the same."

"Miss What-d'-you-call-her" was Imogen's room-mate, a perfectly unknown
girl, who had been to her imagination one of the chief bug-bears of the
voyage. She was curled up on the sofa in a tumbled little heap when they
entered the stateroom, had evidently been crying, and did not look at
all formidable, being no older than Imogen, very small and shy, a soft,
dark-eyed appealing creature, half English, half Belgic by extraction,
and going out, it appeared, to join a lover who for three years had been
in California making ready for her. He was to meet her in New York, with
a clergyman in his pocket, so to speak, and as soon as the marriage
ceremony was performed, they were to set out for their ranch in the San
Gabriel Valley, to raise grapes, dry raisins, and "live happily all the
days of their lives afterward," like the prince and princess of a fairy
tale.

These confid