Queenstown without taking on the mails or putting off enraged
passengers) Peter thought he would go to the gymnasium and work up an
appetite for luncheon. He had looked in the first day, and had seen a
thing which could give you all the sensations and benefits of a camel
ride across the desert. He had ridden camels in real deserts and liked
them. Now he did not see why waves should not answer just as well as
dunes, and was looking forward to the experiment; but he must have
been absent-minded, for when he opened what ought to have been the
gymnasium door, it was not the gymnasium door. It was--good
heavens!--_what_ was it?

Peter Rolls, the unimaginative young man, thought that he must be in
his berth and dreaming he was here. For this room that he was looking
into could not possibly be a room on a ship, not even on the
_Monarchic_, that had all the latest, day-after-to-morrow improvements
and luxuries. The very bread was to-morrow's bread; but these
marvellous creatures could not be supplied by the management as
improvements or luxuries of any kind. Peter seemed to have opened a
door into a crystal-walled world peopled entirely by dryads.

He thought of dryads, because in pictures, beings called by that name
were taller, slimmer, more graceful, more beautiful, and had longer
legs than young females of mortal breed. There were five of them (at
least he believed there were five), and though it was eleven o'clock
in the morning, they were dressed as if for the prince's ball in the
story of "Cinderella." Unless on the stage, Peter had never seen such
dresses or such girls.

He heard himself gasp; and afterward, when he and a wave together had
banged the door shut, he hoped that he had said: "I beg your pardon."