‘My friend, if you call him so; and indeed I hope he is, for I like him. But I don’t know more of him than I do of you. I also am as much alone as you are. Perhaps more so.’

‘But,’ she said, ‘a man never suffers in being alone.’

‘Oh! does he not? Don’t think me uncivil, Miss Viner, if I say that you may be mistaken in that. You feel your own shoe when it pinches, but do not realize the tight boot of your neighbour.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said she. And then there was a pause, during which she pretended to look again for the orange-groves. ‘But there are worse things, Mr. Forrest, than being alone in the world. It is often a woman’s lot to wish that she were let alone.’ Then she left him and retreated to the side of the grumpy gentleman’s wife, feeling perhaps that it might be prudent to discontinue a conversation, which, seeing that Mr. Forrest was quite a stranger to her, was becoming particular.

‘You’re getting on famously, my dear,’ said the lady from Barbadoes.

‘Pretty well, thank you, ma’am,’ said Miss Viner.

‘Mr. Forrest seems to be making himself quite agreeable. I tell Amelia,’—Amelia was the young lady to whom in their joint cabin Miss Viner could not reconcile herself—‘I tell Amelia that she is wrong not to receive attentions from gentlemen on board ship. If it is not carried too far,’ and she put great emphasis on the ‘too far’—‘ I see no harm in it.’

‘Nor I, either,’ said Miss Viner.

‘But then Amelia is so particular.’

‘The best way is to take such things as they come,’ said Miss Viner,—perhaps meaning that such things never did come in the way of Amelia. ‘If a lady knows what she is about she need not fear a gentleman’s attentions.’

‘That’s just what I tell Amelia; but then, my dear, she has not had so much experience as you and I.’

Such being the amenities which passed between Miss Viner and the prudent lady who had her in charge, it was not wonderful that the former should feel ill at ease with her own ‘party’, as the family of the Grumpy Barbadian was generally considered to be by those on board.

‘You’re getting along like a house on fire with Miss Viner,’ said Matthew Morris, to his young friend.

‘Not much fire I can assure you,’ said Forrest.

‘She ain’t so ugly as you thought her?’

‘Ugly!—no; she’s not ugly. I don’t think I ever said she was. But she is nothing particular as regards beauty.’

‘No; she won’t be lovely for the next three days to come, I dare say. By the time you reach Panama, she’ll be all that is perfect in woman. I know how these things go.’

‘Those sort of things don’t go at all quickly with me,’ said Forrest, gravely. ‘Miss Viner is a very interesting young woman, and as it seems that her route and mine will be together for some time, it is well that we should be civil to each other. And the more so, seeing that the people she is with are not congenial to her.’

‘No; they are not. There is no young man with them. I generally observe that on board ship no one is congenial to unmarried ladies except unmarried men. It is a recognized nautical rule. Uncommon hot,