“Mildred,” it said, “I do wish you would not come to sea; I am beginning to feel ill.”

“And no wonder, if you will insist upon coming up ladders head downwards.  Where’s John?  He will help you to your cabin; the deck one, next to mine.”

But John had vanished with a parcel.

“Mildred, send some one quick, I beg of you,” remarked Miss Terry, in the solemn tones of one who feels that a crisis is approaching.

“I can’t see anybody except a very dirty sailor.”

“Permit me,” said Arthur, stepping to the rescue.

“You are very kind; but she can’t walk.  I know her ways; she has got to the stage when she must be carried.  Can you manage her?”

“I think so,” replied Arthur, “if you don’t mind holding her legs, and provided that the vessel does not roll,” and, with an effort, he hoisted Miss Terry baby-fashion into his arms, and staggered off with her towards the indicated cabin, Mrs. Carr, as suggested, holding the lower limbs of the prostrate lady.  Presently she began to laugh.

“If you only knew how absurd we look,” she said.

“Don’t make me laugh,” answered Arthur, puffing; for Miss Terry was by no means light, “or I shall drop her.”

“If you do, young man,” ejaculated his apparently unconscious burden with wonderful energy, “I will never forgive you.”

A remark, the suddenness of which so startled him, that he very nearly did.

“Thank you.  Now lay her quite flat, please.  She won’t get up again till we drop anchor at Madeira.”

“If I live so long,” murmured the invalid.

Arthur now made his bow and departed, wondering how two women so dissimilar as Mrs. Carr and Miss Terry came to be living together.  As it is a piece of curiosity that the reader may share, perhaps it had better be explained.

Miss Terry was a middle-aged relative of Mrs. Carr’s late husband, who had by a series of misfortunes been left quite destitute.  Her distress having come to the knowledge of Mildred Carr, she, with the kind-hearted promptitude that distinguished her, at once came to her aid, paid her debts, and brought her to her own house to stay, where she had remained ever since under the title of companion.  These two women, living thus together, had nothing whatsoever in common, save that Miss Terry took some reflected interest in beetles.  As for travelling, having been brought up and lived in the same house of the same county town until she reached the age of forty-five, it was, as may be imagined, altogether obnoxious to her.  Indeed, it is more than doubtful if she retained any clear impression whatsoever of the places she visited.  “A set of foreign holes!” as she would call them, contemptuously.  Miss Terry was, in short, neither clever nor strong minded, but so long as she could be in the company of her beloved Mildred, whom she regarded with mingled reverence and affection, she was perfectly happy.  Oddly enough, this affection was reciprocated, and there probably was nobody in the world for whom Mrs. Carr cared so much as her cousin by marriage, Agatha Terry.  And yet it would be impossible to imagine two women more dissimilar.