“But I always try and cheer up other people,” said the little lady, complacently.  “I have a bad bout, and then I go and visit others, and keep up their spirits—­going round the wards I call it.  When I came out, Mrs. Kite, of our regiment, and Mrs. Dove, of the 100th ‘Scatterers,’ would have laid themselves down and died if it hadn’t been for me; but I roused them—­Mrs. Kite, at least—­for poor Mrs. Dove gave way so, she wasn’t out of her berth for a week, and could keep down nothing but a peppermint, and the stewardess never came near her.”

“But surely everybody won’t be ill!” said Bluebell, somewhat appalled by these statistics, and, with the close air of the cabin, feeling her head swim a little.  “I believe it is better not to think about it.”

“Certainly; let us change the subject.  Will you hand me my eau-de-Cologne?  And so you have never been to England before.”

“Never,” responded Bluebell, not inveigled into giving any further information by Mrs. Oliphant’s look of curiosity.

“Perhaps you are going out now to be married?” (archly.)

“No,” said the girl, composedly; “if that were the case I should hope my intended husband would come and fetch me.”

“Well,” said the lady, finding she was to extract nothing, “I suppose we must be getting ready for dinner.  In the P. and O. it used to be full evening costume, but one soon has to give that up on the Atlantic; so you see I just change my body for a white Garibaldi, and put a coloured net on.  I have four nets, mauve, magenta, green, and blue; these make a nice change.”

But in spite of her extreme satisfaction in her own arrangements, she felt secretly disgusted at the freshness of Bluebell’s appearance in an uncrushable soft barege trimmed with blue.  It was also rather a blow to observe those thick shining coils of chestnut hair were not supplemented from the stores of any Translantic coiffeur.

When they came to dinner, a little more motion was perceivable as they were entering the Gulf, and the table was mapped out with ominous-looking frames of wood for the confinement of plates and glasses.  The bride came down gorgeously attired in a Parisian garb of mauve silk, cut square, but looking slightly white and less secure of admiration than she had in the morning.

“That is not a very serviceable dress for a sea voyage,” whispered Bluebell’s neighbour, seriously.  A few remarks had already passed between them, and she had discovered him to have large, demure, brown eyes, that never appeared to notice anything except for the gleams of secret amusement that occasionally danced in them.  “It quite sets my teeth on edge seeing those stewards tilting the soup close to and trampling on it.”

“She must be a bride, I suppose,” returned Bluebell, “and has so many new dresses, she doesn’t care about spoiling one or two.”

“Heavens! what a view of matrimony!  And these are the reckless opinions of young ladies of the present day!  Why, Miss Leigh, the greater part of my great-grandmother’s trousseau still exists in an old trunk; and my cousin Kate went to a fancy ball in her tabinet paduasoy, which was as good as new.”