, taking it as a matter of course.
Miss Filbert was by this time very much impregnated with the idea that
they would, she did not know precisely how, but that would open itself
out. Duff had long been assimilated as part of the programme. All that
money and humility could contribute should be forthcoming from him; she
had a familiar dream of him as her standard-bearer, undistinguished but
for ever safe.

Yet it was with qualified approval that Mrs. Simpson, amid the confusion
of the Coromandel's preparations for departure at London Docks,
heard the inevitable strains of the Salvation Army rising aft. Laura
immediately cried, "I shall have friends among the passengers," and Mrs.
Simpson so far forgot herself as to say, "Yes, if they are nice." The
ladies were sitting on deck beside the pile of Laura's very superior
cabin luggage. Mrs. Simpson glanced at it as if it offered a kind of
corroboration of the necessity of their being nice. "There are always a
few delightful Christian people, if one takes the trouble to find them
out, at this end of the ship," she said defensively. "I have never
failed to find it so."

"I don't think much of Christians who are so hard to discover,"
Laura said with decision; and Mrs. Simpson, rebuked, thought of the
mischievous nature of class prejudices. Laura herself--had she not
been drawn from what one might call distinctly the other end of the
ship?--and who, among those who vaunted themselves ladies and gentlemen,
could compare with Laura! The idea that she had shown a want of sympathy
with those dear people who were so strenuously calling down a blessing
on the Coromandel somewhere behind the smoke stacks, embittered poor
Mrs. Simpson's remaining tears of farewell, and when the bell rang the
signal for the last good-bye, she embraced her young friend with the
fervent request, "Do make friends with them, dear one--make friends with
them at once"; and Laura said, "If they will make friends with me."

By the time the ship had well got her nose down the coast of Spain, Miss
Filbert had created her atmosphere, and moved about in it from end to
end of the quarter-deck. It was a recognisable thing, her atmosphere,
one never knew when it would discharge a question relating to the
gravest matters; and persons unprepared to give satisfaction upon this
point--one fears there are some on a ship bound east of Suez--found
it blighting. They moved their long chairs out of the way, they
turned pointed