have gone through with the undertaking but it was too late to go back
now. So on the second day after Midsummer Day we went off by the morning
mail. And when we came to the sea which I had never seen but once in my
life and that when my poor Lirriper was courting me, the freshness of it
and the deepness and the airiness and to think that it had been rolling
ever since and that it was always a rolling and so few of us minding,
made me feel quite serious. But I felt happy too and so did Jemmy and
the Major and not much motion on the whole, though me with a swimming in
the head and a sinking but able to take notice that the foreign insides
appear to be constructed hollower than the English, leading to much more
tremenjous noises when bad sailors.

But my dear the blueness and the lightness and the coloured look of
everything and the very sentry-boxes striped and the shining rattling
drums and the little soldiers with their waists and tidy gaiters, when we
got across to the Continent--it made me feel as if I don't know what--as
if the atmosphere had been lifted off me. And as to lunch why bless you
if I kept a man-cook and two kitchen-maids I couldn't got it done for
twice the money, and no injured young woman a glaring at you and grudging
you and acknowledging your patronage by wishing that your food might
choke you, but so civil and so hot and attentive and every way
comfortable except Jemmy pouring wine down his throat by tumblers-full
and me expecting to see him drop under the table.

And the way in which Jemmy spoke his French was a real charm. It was
often wanted of him, for whenever anybody spoke a syllable to me I says
"Non-comprenny, you're very kind, but it's no use--Now Jemmy!" and then
Jemmy he fires away at 'em lovely, the only thing wanting in Jemmy's
French being as it appeared to me that he hardly ever understood a word
of what they said to him which made it scarcely of the use it might have