"When he heard that the boys were seasick too, he actually laughed
and began to get better right away. There is really only one cure
for the mal de mer, and that is the fun of knowing that somebody else
is suffering too. If some of you ladies would kindly yield to the
seductions of the sea, I think we could get this poor girl on her
feet in an instant."

Unfortunately for poor Ophelia, there was no immediate response to
this appeal, and the unhappy young woman was forced to suffer in
solitude.

"We have no time for untimely diversions of this sort," snapped
Xanthippe, with a scornful glance at the suffering Ophelia, who,
having retired to a comfortable lounge at an end of the room, was
evidently improving. "I have no sympathy with this habit some of my
sex seem to have acquired of succumbing to an immediate sensation of
this nature."

"I hope to be pardoned for interrupting," said Mrs. Noah, with a
great deal of firmness, "but I wish Mrs. Socrates to understand that
it is rather early in the voyage for her to lay down any such broad
principle as that, and for her own sake to-morrow, I think it would
be well if she withdrew the sentiment. There are certain things
about a sea-voyage that are more or less beyond the control of man or
woman, and any one who chides that poor suffering child on yonder
sofa ought to be more confident than Mrs. Socrates can possibly be
that within an hour she will not be as badly off. People who live in
glass houses should not throw dice."