e had sailed for biscuit a
few years, how he would have handled a ship!

As he was, he had the eye of a hawk for Nature's beauties, and the sea
always came back to him like a friend after an absence.

This scene, then, curled round his heart a little, and he felt the good
physician was wiser than the tribe that go by that name, and strive to
build health on the sandy foundation of drugs.

"Saunders! do you know what Dr. Aberford means by the lower classes?"

"Perfectly, my lord."

"Are there any about here?"

"I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord."

"Get me some"--_(cigarette)._

Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful _empressement,_ but an
internal shrug of his shoulders.

He was absent an hour and a half; he then returned with a double
expression on his face--pride at his success in diving to the very
bottom of society, and contempt of what he had fished up thence.

He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, _sotto voce,_ but
impressively, "This is low enough, my lord." Then glided back, and
ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he had ever
opened a door to in the whole course of his perfumed existence.

On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin, with a broad
lace border, stiffened and arched over the forehead, about three inches
high, leaving the brow and cheeks unencumbered.

They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in patterns,
confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed below the
waist; short woolen petticoats, with broad vertical stripes, red and
white, most vivid in color; white worsted stockings, and neat, though
high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets they wore a thick spotted
cotton handkerchief, about one inch of which was visible round the lower
part of the throat. Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or
gathered up toward the front, and the second, of the same color, hung in
the usual way.

Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with the red blood
mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious black eyebrows.

The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as white as milk;
glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which glittered like gold, and
a blue eye, which, being contrasted with dark eyebrows and lashes, took
the luminous effect peculiar to that rare beauty.

Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle, and a leg with a noble
swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, buil