I perceived that gently and privately she registered objections.
She cast a disapproving eye upon the wife of a Conservator of
Forests, who scanned with interest a distant funnel and laid a small
wager that it belonged to the Messageries Maritimes. She looked
with a straightened lip at the crisply stepping women who walked the
deck in short and rather shabby skirts with their hands in their
jacket-pockets talking transfers and promotions; and having got up
at six to make a water-colour sketch of the sunrise, she came to me
in profound indignation to say that she had met a man in his
pyjamas; no doubt; poor wretch, on his way to be shaved. I was
unable to convince her he was not expected to visit the barber in
all his clothes.

At the end of the third day she told me that she wished these people
wouldn't talk to her; she didn't like them. I had turned in the
hour we left the Channel and had not left my berth since, so
possibly I was not in the most amiable mood to receive a douche of
cold water. 'I must try to remember, dear,' I said, ' that you have
been brought up altogether in the society of pussies and vicars and
elderly ladies, and of course you miss them. But you must have a
little patience. I shall be up tomorrow, if this beastly sea
continues to go down; and then we will try to find somebody suitable
to introduce to you.'

'Thank you, mamma,' said my daughter, without a ray of suspicion.
Then she added consideringly, 'Aunt Emma and Aunt Alice do seem
quite elderly ladies beside you, and yet you are older than either
of them aren't you? I wonder how that is.'

It was so innocent, so admirable, that I laughed at my own expense;