MR. TOMBEY GOES FORWARD.


From that day forward, the voyage on the Kangaroo was, until the last
dread catastrophe, a very happy one for Augusta. Lord and Lady Holmhurst
made much of her, and all the rest of the first-class passengers followed
suit, and soon she found herself the most popular character on board. The
two copies of her book that there were on the ship were passed on from
hand to hand till they would hardly hang together, and, really, at last
she got quite tired of hearing of her own creations. But this was not
all; Augusta was, it will be remembered, an exceedingly pretty woman, and
melancholy as the fact may seem, it still remains a fact that a pretty
woman is in the eyes of most people a more interesting object than a man,
or than a lady, who is not "built that way." Thus it came to pass that
what between her youth, her beauty, her talent, and her misfortunes--for
Lady Holmhurst had not exactly kept that history to herself--Augusta was
all of a sudden elevated into the position of a perfect heroine. It
really almost frightened the poor girl, who had been accustomed to
nothing but sorrow, ill-treatment and grinding poverty, to suddenly find
herself in this strange position, with every man on board that great
vessel at her beck and call. But she was human, and therefore, of course
she enjoyed it. It _is_ something when one has been wandering for hour
after hour in the wet and melancholy night, suddenly to see the fair dawn
breaking and burning overhead, and to know that the worst is over, for
now there will be light whereby to set our feet. It is something, too, to
the most Christian soul, to utterly and completely triumph over one who
had done all in his power to crush and destroy you; whose grasping greed
has indirectly been the cause of the death of the person you loved best
in the whole world round. And she did triumph. As Mr. Meeson's conduct to
her got about, the little society of the ship--which was, after all a