must be!" said the doctor with a slight indescribable
expression,--"if at this moment you can be roused to wonder at
anything."

Mr. Motley inclined his head with perfect suavity in honour of the
doctor's words.

"It's a glorious thing to lie here on deck and do nothing!" he said,
extending his elegantly clad limbs rather more into the distance. "How
fine the breeze is, doctor--what do you think of the day, as a whole?"

"Unfinished, at present,--"

"Well--" said Mr. Motley,--"take that part of it which you with such
precision term 'this moment',--what do you think of it as it appears
here on deck?"

"Sunny--" said the doctor,--"and we are flies. On the whole I think
it's a bore, Motley."

"What do you think of the Black Hole of Calcutta, in comparison?" said
Mr. Motley closing his eyes.

"The difference is, that _that_ would have been an insufferable bore."

Mr. Motley smiled--stroking his chin with affectionate fingers. "On the
whole," he said, "I think you're right in that position. What do you
suppose Linden's about at this moment?"

"Is he your ward?" said the doctor.

"He's down below--" said Mr. Motley with a significant pointing of his
train of remarks. "By which I don't mean! that he's left this
planet--for truly, when he does I think it will be in a different
direction; but he's down in the steerage--trying to get some of those
creatures to follow him."

"Which way?"

"You and George Alcott have such a snappish thread in you!" said Mr.
Motley yawning--"only it sits better on George than it does on you. But
I like it--it rather excites me to be snubbed. However, here comes
Linden--so I hope they'll not follow him _this_ way."

"This way" Mr. Linden himself did not come, but chose another part of
the deck for a somewhat prolonged walk in the seabreeze. The doctor
glanced towards him, then moved his chair slightly, so as to put the
walker out of his range of vision.

"He's a good fellow enough," he remarked carelessly. "You were pleased
to speak of him just now as 'incomprehensible'--may I ask how he has
earned a title to that?" The tone was a little slighting.

"Take the last instance--" said Mr. Motley,--"you yourself were pleased
to pronounce the steerage a more insufferable bore than the deck--yet
he chooses it,--and not only on Sundays. I don't believe there's a day
that he don't go down there. He's popular enough without it--'tisn't
that. And nobody knows it--one of the sailors told me.