“It’s good of you to look after young Jimmy,” he said, smiling at Marcella.  “He misses his mother.”

“Is she dead?”

“Yes.  He’s only me.  There are a surprising lot of lonely people in the world, aren’t there?  The little lady next to me—­she’s a widow, I find.  It’s hard when a woman has had a man to depend on and suddenly finds herself left to battle with the world, isn’t it?  Women are such fragile little flowers to me—­they want protecting from the winds.”

Marcella looked at him; he was rather fat:  the excitement of his talk with the little lady had made his forehead shine; when he smiled his drooping moustache could not hide a row of blackened, broken teeth.  He smelt of stale tobacco, as though he carried old pipes in every pocket.  He ate quickly and noisily, his eyes on his plate, his shoulders moving.

Jimmy asked timidly if he might have a piece of bread and jam.  His father said “Yes, of course,” and went on eating.  Marcella spread the jam for him, and then turned to his father.

“I don’t know many women,” she said.  “But I’d just like to see a man treat me as a fragile flower.”

“Ah, wasteful woman!” said Mr. Peters, smiling fatuously as he wrestled with a hard piece of ham rather too big for his mouth.  As soon as he had swallowed it, he went on, “That’s the thing a man loves in a woman—­a real man, that is!  ‘Just like the ivy, I cling to thee’ should be a woman’s motto, a true woman’s motto.  A woman’s weakness, her trust in man is her most womanly characteristic.  It appeals to all that is best and chivalrous in a man.”

A fragile voice at his elbow said, “Mistah Petahs,” and he turned hurriedly towards it.  Marcella said, “Pooh!” loudly and very rudely and turned to Jimmy.

“Do you like cake?” she asked.

“Rather!  Gran gives me cake.”

“Well, you come with me into my little house after tea and we’ll have some.  What number is your little house?”

“Fifteen.”

“Mine is Number 9 so we are not very far away.”

She looked round several times for Louis Farne, wondering if he would consider it beneath his dignity to have his meals with the steerage people, but could not see him.  Even after she and Jimmy had explored her cabin, eaten some cake and walked several times up and down the deck talking, while the wind blew keenly in their faces, she saw nothing of him and there was dead silence in his cabin.  Her deck-chair, she noticed, was where she had seen it put among a pile of others; later in the day Knollys came along and stencilled her initials.

“If you don’t have your name on, some of these blooming emigrants will pinch it, or the deck-hands will hide it till we’re a few days out and sell it to someone else.”

She began to think Knollys was a very useful person to know, for all his superiority and pessimism.