till
she could be conducted to a restaurant and dumped down in front of a
bowl of soup.

"Bit choppy, I suppose, what?" he bellowed, in a voice that ran up and
down Lady Underhill's nervous system like an electric needle. "I was
afraid you were going to have a pretty rough time of it when I read
the forecast in the paper. The good old boat wobbled a bit, eh?"

Lady Underhill uttered a faint moan. Freddie noticed that she was
looking deucedly chippy, even chippier than a moment ago.

"It's an extraordinary thing about that Channel crossing," said Algy
Martyn meditatively, as he puffed a refreshing cloud. "I've known
fellows who could travel quite happily everywhere else in the
world--round the Horn in sailing-ships and all that sort of
thing--yield up their immortal soul crossing the Channel! Absolutely
yield up their immortal soul! Don't know why. Rummy, but there it is!"

"I'm like that myself," assented Ronny Devereux. "That dashed trip
from Calais gets me every time. Bowls me right over. I go aboard,
stoked to the eyebrows with sea-sick remedies, swearing that this time
I'll fool 'em, but down I go ten minutes after we've started and the
next thing I know is somebody saying, 'Well, well! So this is Dover!'"

"It's exactly the same with me," said Freddie, delighted with the
smooth, easy way the conversation was flowing. "Whether it's the hot,
greasy smell of the engines...."

"It's not the engines," contended Ronny Devereux. "Stands to reason it
can't be. I rather like the smell of engines. This station is reeking
with the smell of engine-grease, and I can drink it in and enjoy it."
He sniffed, luxuriantly. "It's something else."

"Ronny's right," said Algy cordially. "It isn't the engines. It's the
way the boat heaves up and down and up and down and up and down...."
He shifted his cigar to his left hand in order to give with his right
a spirited illustration of a Channel steamer going up and down and up
and down and up and down. Lady Underhill, who had opened her eyes, had
an excellent view of the performance, and closed her eyes again
quickly.

"Be quiet!" she snapped.

"I was only saying...."

"Be quiet!"

"Oh, rather!"

Lady Underhill wrestled with herself. She was a woman of great
will-power and accustomed to triumph over the weaknesses of the flesh.
After a while her eyes opened. She had forced herself, against the
evidence of her senses, to recognize that this was a platform on which
she stood