She sat for some time alone in the saloon, waiting till the rush for state rooms should have a little subsided before making a timid request for her own.

Several people were now returning, apparently with disburdened minds, for anxious wrinkles were smoothed out into complacent curiosity.  Bluebell made an incoherent attack on the stewardess, who swept by, without attending, and after being passed on from one official to the other, she found herself half-proprietess of a dark confined den, with two berths, two wash-hand-stands, and a sofa.  Her partner in these luxuries had apparently taken possession and gone, for rather a queer shawl lay on one berth, and a singularly tasteless hat hung on a peg.

These significant articles deprived the little dungeon of all charms of privacy, and, feeling as if it belonged so much more to the other lodger, and she herself were somewhat of an intruder, Bluebell left her small effects in the portmanteau, which she stowed away in the most unobstrusive manner, not even venturing to hang up the brown-holland contrivance of Aunt Jane.

Then she found her way on deck, where most of the passengers were congregated, and, sitting down on a centre bench, in rather inconvenient proximity to a skylight, was sufficiently amused in speculating on her fellow travellers.

“My comrade can’t be among them,” she thought, “for she has left her hat below.”

Most noticeable were a young officer and his bride, as Bluebell immediately decided the latter to be, partly from her helpless exigeante demeanour, and partly from the extreme newness of her fashionable get up.

The minuteness and height of her heels were more conducive to the Grecian bend than preserving a balance on a sloping deck, and her fanciful aquatic costume of pale-blue serge more adapted to a nautical scene in private theatricals than for contact with the drenching spray of the rough Atlantic.

But ere the anchor weighed she shone pre-eminent, and had the gratification of making a dozen other women feel shabby and dissatisfied.

In contrast to these was a sickly-looking, middle-class person, with two children tastefully arrayed in purple frocks, red stockings, and magenta comforters.  They were clinging to a coarse-looking girl, also with a preference for cheerfulness of hue, who carried a felt donkey, and seemed to be the nursery-maid.

The head of this household, apparently, was not going to accompany them, and, indeed, appeared in rather a more elevated condition than could be wished.  He addressed Bluebell, and inquired if her cabin was near his wife’s, and, on professing ignorance, said he trusted it might prove so, as “he naturally felt great anxiety at her travelling so lone and unprotected like,”—­a slight unsteadiness of gait showing how irreparable was the loss of her legitimate defender.  The people around stared and smiled, but he continued to gaze, in a mournful and approving way, at Bluebell, while his wife sat in a state of repressed endurance, calculating how many more minutes he would have for exposing himself before the tug separated friends from passengers.