ght tremour about her full, rich lip, that memory was also
busy with its frightful images. The quick-searching eye of the Rover was
not slow to detect the change. As though he would banish every
recollection that might give her pain, he artfully, but delicately, gave a
new direction to the discourse.

"There are people who think the sea has no amusements," he said. "To a
pining, home-sick, sea-sick miserable, this may well be true; but the man
who has spirit enough to keep down the qualms of the animal may tell a
different tale. We have our balls regularly, for instance; and there are
artists on board this ship, who, though they cannot, perhaps, make as
accurate a right angle with their legs as the first dancer of a leaping
ballet, can go through their figures in a gale of wind; which is more than
can be said of the highest jumper of them all on shore."

"A ball, without females, would, at least, be thought an unsocial
amusement, with us uninstructed people of terra firma."

"Hum! It might be better for a lady or two Then, have we our theatre:
Farce, comedy, and the buskin, take their turns to help along the time.
You fellow, that you see lying on the fore-topsail-yard like an indolent
serpent basking on the branch of a tree, will 'roar you as gently as any
sucking dove!' And here is a votary of Momus, who would raise a smile on
the lips of a sea-sick friar: I believe I can say no more in his
commendation."

"All this is well in the description," returned Mrs Wyllys; "but
something is due to the merit of the--poet, or, painter shall I term you?"

"Neither, but a grave and veritable chronologer. However, since you doubt,
and since you are so new to the ocean"--

"Pardon me!" the lady gravely interrupted, "I am, on the contrary, one who
has seen much of it."

The Rover, who had rather suffered his unsettled glances to wander over
the youthful countenance of Gertrude than towards her companion, now bent
his eyes on the last speaker, where he kept them fastened so long as to
create some little embarrassment in the subject of his gaze.

"You seem surprised that the time of a female should have been thus
employed," she observed, with a view to arouse his attention to the
impropriety of his observation.

"We were speaking of the sea, if I remember," he continued, like a man
that was suddenly awakened from a deep reverie. "Ay, I know it was of the
sea; for I had grown boastful in my panegyrics: I had told you that this