persons in the course of commending their young sister to the protection of the Almighty in her approaching separation from the dear friends who surrounded her in Plymouth, made references implying that her labours would continue to the glory of God, taking it as a matter of course.  Miss Filbert was by this time very much impregnated with the idea that they would, she did not know precisely how, but that would open itself out.  Duff had long been assimilated as part of the programme.  All that money and humility could contribute should be forthcoming from him; she had a familiar dream of him as her standard-bearer, undistinguished but for ever safe.

Yet it was with qualified approval that Mrs. Simpson, amid the confusion of the Coromandel’s preparations for departure at London Docks, heard the inevitable strains of the Salvation Army rising aft.  Laura immediately cried, “I shall have friends among the passengers,” and Mrs. Simpson so far forgot herself as to say, “Yes, if they are nice.”  The ladies were sitting on deck beside the pile of Laura’s very superior cabin luggage.  Mrs. Simpson glanced at it as if it offered a kind of corroboration of the necessity of their being nice.  “There are always a few delightful Christian people, if one takes the trouble to find them out, at this end of the ship,” she said defensively.  “I have never failed to find it so.”

“I don’t think much of Christians who are so hard to discover,” Laura said with decision; and Mrs. Simpson, rebuked, thought of the mischievous nature of class prejudices.  Laura herself—­had she not been drawn from what one might call distinctly the other end of the ship?—­and who, among those who vaunted themselves ladies and gentlemen, could compare with Laura!  The idea that she had shown a want of sympathy with those dear people who were so strenuously calling down a blessing on the Coromandel somewhere behind the smoke stacks, embittered poor Mrs. Simpson’s remaining tears of farewell, and when the bell rang the signal for the last good-bye, she embraced her young friend with the fervent request, “Do make friends with them, dear one—­make friends with them at once”; and Laura said, “If they will make friends with me.”

By the time the ship had well got her nose down the coast of Spain, Miss Filbert had created her atmosphere, and moved about in it from end to end of the quarter-deck.  It was a recognisable thing, her atmosphere, one never knew when it would discharge a question relating to the gravest matters; and persons unprepared to give satisfaction upon this point—­one fears there are some on a ship bound east of Suez—­found it blighting.  They moved their long chairs out of the way, they turned pointedly indifferent backs, the lady who shared Miss Filbert’s cabin—­she belonged to a smart cavalry regiment at Mhow—­went about saying things with a distinct edge.  Miss Filbert exhausted all the means.  She attempted to hold a meeting forward of the smoking cabin, standing