Here was a ship almost as long as Main Street is back home, and six stories high, with an English basement; with restaurants and elevators and retail stores in her; and she was as broad as a courthouse; and while lying at the dock she had appeared to be about the most solid and dependable thing in creation—­and yet in just a few hours’ time she had altered her whole nature, and was rolling and sliding and charging and snorting like a warhorse.  It was astonishing in the extreme, and you would not have expected it of her.

Even as I focused my mind on this phenomenon the doorway was stealthily entered by a small man in a uniform that made him look something like an Eton schoolboy and something like a waiter in a dairy lunch.  I was about to have the first illuminating experience with an English manservant.  This was my bedroom steward, by name Lubly—­William Lubly.  My hat is off to William Lubly—­to him and to all his kind.  He was always on duty; he never seemed to sleep; he was always in a good humor, and he always thought of the very thing you wanted just a moment or two before you thought of it yourself, and came a-running and fetched it to you.  Now he was softly stealing in to close my port.  As he screwed the round, brass-faced window fast he glanced my way and caught my apprehensive eye.

“Good morning, sir,” he said, and said it in such a way as to convey a subtle compliment.

“Is it getting rough outside?” I said—­I knew about the inside.  “Thank you,” he said; “the sea ’as got up a bit, sir—­thank you, sir.”

I was gratified—­nay more, I was flattered.  And it was so delicately done too.  I really did not have the heart to tell him that I was not solely responsible—­that I had, so to speak, collaborators; but Lubly stood ready always to accord me a proper amount of recognition for everything that happened on that ship.  Only the next day, I think it was, I asked him where we were.  This occurred on deck.  He had just answered a lady who wanted to know whether we should have good weather on the day we landed at Fishguard and whether we should get in on time.  Without a moment’s hesitation he told her; and then he turned to me with the air of giving credit where credit is due, and said: 

“Thank you, sir—­we are just off the Banks, thank you.”

Lubly ran true to form.  The British serving classes are ever like that, whether met with at sea or on their native soil.  They are a great and a noble institution.  Give an English servant a kind word and he thanks you.  Give him a harsh word and he still thanks you.  Ask a question of a London policeman—­he tells you fully and then he thanks you.  Go into an English shop and buy something—­the clerk who serves you thanks you with enthusiasm.  Go in and fail to buy something—­he still thanks you, but without the enthusiasm.

One kind of Englishman says Thank you, sir; and one kind—­the Cockney who has been educated—­says Thenks; but the majority brief it into a short but expressive expletive and merely say:  Kew.  Kew is the commonest word in the British Isles.  Stroidinary runs it a close second, but Kew comes first.  You hear it everywhere.  Hence Kew Gardens; they are named for it.