k and said:

"It is not yet too late, Mr. Barclay, and I really think it ought to be
a public ceremony."

"Sooner than that I would decline it altogether," said I, in no humour
at that moment to be teased by the opinions of an acidulated spinster.

"I consider," said she, "that a wedding can never take place in too
public a manner. It is proper that the whole world should know that a
couple are truly man and wife."

"The whole world," said I, "in the sense of this ship, must know it so
far as I am concerned without seeing it."

"Well," said she, with a simper which her mere streak of lip was but
little fitted to contrive, "I hope you will have all happiness in your
wedded lives."

I bowed, muttering some reply, and passed up the steps, not choosing to
linger longer in the face of the people who hung about me with an air
of carelessness, but with faces of curiosity.

CHAPTER XII

A MARRIAGE AT SEA

Some male passengers paced the deck, but the captain was below,
probably making sure of any hard words he would have to pronounce. I
strolled forwards to the break of the poop and found the ship a lively
scene of emigrants, as I call the steerage folks. There seemed about a
hundred of them, many rough fellows in fur caps and shabby clothes,
smoking and arguing in coarse voices, groups of women talking shrilly,
little children running about in the scuppers; and amongst them the
Jacks of the vessel came and went. I scarcely received a glance from
these people, whence I took it that what was to happen aft had not yet
got wind in the 'tweendecks.

Save a leaning shaft of sail far away down upon the horizon to
starboard there was nothing in sight, unless it were a faint
discolouration as of a steamer's smoke in the pale but clear and windy
blue of the junction of sea and sky over the bow. I searched the ocean
with some anxiety however, for every hour of this kind of sailing
threatened to make a very voyage of our return, and such was my mood
just then, that had anything hove in sight, marriage or no marriage, I
should have exhorted the captain to transfer us.

Presently I looked at my watch: a quarter to ten. Mr. Tooth strolled
up to me.

"All alone, Mr. Barclay? It is a fact, have you noticed, that when a
man is about to get married people hold off from him. I can understand
this of a corpse--there is a sanctity in death; but a live young man
you know--and only because he's going to get married! By t