inction; and he turned to speak of the
difficulty, he had in arranging his affairs for leaving home. His heart
opened a little with the word, and he said how comfortable he and his
wife were in their house, and how much they both hated to shut it up.
When March offered him his card, he said he had none of his own with
him, but that his name was Eltwin. He betrayed a simple wish to have
March realize the local importance he had left behind him; and it was
not hard to comply; March saw a Grand Army button in the lapel of his
coat, and he knew that he was in the presence of a veteran.

He tried to guess his rank; in telling his wife about him, when he went
down to find her just before dinner, but he ended with a certain sense
of affliction. "There are too many elderly invalids on this ship. I
knock against people of my own age everywhere. Why aren't your youthful
lovers more in evidence, my dear? I don't believe they are lovers, and I
begin to doubt if they're young even."

"It wasn't very satisfactory at lunch, certainly," she owned. "But I
know it will be different at dinner." She was putting herself together
after a nap that had made up for the lost sleep of the night before. "I
want you to look very nice, dear. Shall you dress for dinner?" she asked
her husband's image in the state-room glass which she was preoccupying.

"I shall dress in my pea-jacket and sea-boots," it answered.

"I have heard that they always dress for dinner on the big Cunard and
White Star boats, when it's good weather," she went on, placidly.
"I shouldn't want those people to think you were not up in the
convenances."

They both knew that she meant the reticent father and daughter, and
March flung out, "I shouldn't want them to think you weren't. There's
such a thing as overdoing."

She attacked him at another point. "What has annoyed you? What else have
you been doing?"

"Nothing. I've been reading most of the afternoon."

"The Maiden Knight?"

This was the book which nearly everybody had brought on board. It was
just out, and had caught an instant favor, which swelled later to a
tidal wave. It depicted a heroic girl in every trying circumstance of
mediaeval life, and gratified the perennial passion of both sexes for
historical romance, while it flattered woman's instinct of superiority
by the celebration of her unintermitted triumphs, ending in a
preposterous and wholly superfluous self-sacrifice.

March laughed for pleasure in her