Nearly everyone on board seems nice and willing to be pleasant. I
am on smiling terms with most and speaking terms with many, but one
really sees very little of the people outside one's own little set. It
is odd how people drift together and make cliques. There are eight in
our particular set. Colonel and Mrs. Crawley, Major and Mrs. Wilmot;
Captain Gordon, Mr. Brand, G., and myself. The Crawleys, the Wilmots,
and Captain Gordon are going back after furlough; Mr. Brand and G. and
I are going only for pleasure and the cold weather. Our table is much
the merriest in the saloon. Mrs. Crawley is a fascinating woman; I
never tire watching her. Very pretty, very smart with a pretty wit,
she has the most delightfully gay, infectious laugh, which contrasts
oddly with her curiously sad, unsmiling eyes, Mrs. Wilmot has a
Madonna face. I don't mean one of those silly, fat-faced Madonnas one
sees in the Louvre and elsewhere, but one's own idea of the Madonna;
the kind of face, as someone puts it, that God must love.

She isn't pretty and she isn't in the least smart, but she is just a
kind, sweet, wise woman. Her husband is a cheery soul, very big and
boyish and always in uproarious spirits. Captain Gordon makes a good
listener. Mr. Brand, although he must have left school quite ten years
ago, is still very reminiscent of Eton and has a school-boyish taste
in silly rhymes and riddles. Colonel Crawley, a stern and somewhat
awe-inspiring man, a distinguished soldier, I am told, hates
_passionately_ being asked riddles, and we make him frantic at table
repeating Mr. Brand's witticisms. He sits with a patient, disgusted
face while we repeat,

"Owen More had run away
Owin' more than he could pay;