and skirts; Mrs. Crawley in a soft green muslin and rose-wreathed hat was a cool and dainty vision.  Well, to return.  As Mrs. Crawley shook up her chintz cushions, she looked across at the Candle—­a long look that took in the elaborate golden hair, the much too smart blouse, the abbreviated skirt showing the high-heeled slippers, the crowd of callow youths—­and then, smiling slightly to herself, settled down in her chair.  I grew hot all over for the Candle.  I don’t suppose I need trouble myself.  I expect she is used to having women look at her like that, and doesn’t mind.  Does she really like silly boys so much and other women so little, I wonder!  There is generally something rather nasty about a woman who declares she can’t get on with other women and whom other women don’t like.  Men have an absurd notion that we can’t admire another woman or admit her good points.  It isn’t so.  We admire a pretty woman just as much as you do.  The only difference is you men think that if a woman has a lovely face it follows, as the night the day, that she must have a lovely disposition.  We know better that’s all.

The poor Candle!  I feel so mean and guilty writing about her under her very eyes, so to speak.  She looked at me just now quite kindly.  I have a good mind to tear this up, but after all what does it matter?  My silly little observations won’t make any impression on your masculine mind.  Only don’t say “Spiteful little cat,” because I don’t mean to be, really.

This is much the longest letter I ever wrote.  You will have to read a page at a time and then take a long breath and try again.

Mr. Brand has just come up to ask us why a sculptor dies a horrible death?  Do you know?

S.S.  Scotia, Nov. 6.

No one unendowed with the temper of an angel and the patience of a Job should attempt the voyage to India.  Mrs. Albert Murray has neither of these qualifications any more than I have, and for two days she hasn’t deigned to address a remark to G. or me, all because of a lost pair of stockings; a loss which we treated with unseemly levity.  However, the chill haughtiness of our cabin companion is something of a relief in this terrible heat.  For it is hot.  I am writing in the cabin, and in spite of the fact that there are two electric fans buzzing on either side of me, I am hotter than I can say, and deplorably ill-tempered.  Four times this morning, trying to keep out of Mrs. Albert Murray’s way, I have fallen over that wretched hat-box, still here despite our hints about the baggage-room, and now in revenge I am sitting on it, though what the owner would say, if she came in suddenly and found to what base uses I had put her treasure, I dare not let myself think.  G. has a bad headache, and it is dull for her to be alone, so that is the reason why I am in the cabin at all.  To be honest, it is most unpleasant on deck, rainy with a damp, hot wind blowing, and the music-room is crowded and stuffy beyond words, or I might not be unselfish enough to remain with G. I did go up, and a fat person, whose nurse was ill, gave me her baby to hold, a poor white-faced, fretful baby, who pulled down all my hair, and I have had the unpleasant task of doing it up again.  If you have ever stood in a very hot greenhouse with the door shut, and wrestled with something above your head, you will know what I felt.