make a tremendous difference; in all our three hundred passengers
there could be no one like him, certainly no one whom I could be
more glad to see. We plunged at once into immediate personal
affairs, we would get at the heart of them later. He gave his vivid
word to everything he had seen and done; we laughed and exclaimed
and were silent in a concert of admirable understanding. We were
still unravelling, still demanding and explaining when the ship's
bell began to ring for church, and almost simultaneously Cecily
advanced towards us. She had a proper Sunday hat on, with flowers
under the brim, and a church-going frock; she wore gloves and
clasped a prayer-book. Most of the women who filed past to the
summons of the bell were going down as they were, in cotton blouses
and serge skirts, in tweed caps or anything, as to a kind of family
prayers. I knew exactly how they would lean against the pillars of
the saloon during the psalms. This young lady would be little less
than a rebuke to them. I surveyed her approach; she positively
walked as if it were Sunday.

'My dear,' I said, 'how endimanchee you look! The bishop will be
very pleased with you. This gentleman is Mr. Tottenham, who
administers Her Majesty's pleasure in parts of India about
Allahabad. My daughter, Dacres.' She was certainly looking very
fresh, and her calm grey eyes had the repose in them that has never
known itself to be disturbed about anything. I wondered whether she
bowed so distantly also because it was Sunday, and then I remembered
that Dacres was a young man, and that the Farnham ladies had
probably taught her that it was right to be very distant with young
men.

'It is almost eleven, mamma.'