o his court, nor the merchant to his desk. Pater-familias receives
no bills; mater-familias orders no dinners. The daughter has no
household linen to disturb her. The son is never recalled to his books.
There is no parliament, no municipality, no vestry. There are neither
rates nor taxes nor rents to be paid. The government is the softest
despotism under which subjects were ever allowed to do almost just as
they please. That the captain has a power is known, but hardly felt. He
smiles on all, is responsible for everything, really rules the world
submitted to him, from the setting of the sails down to the frying of
the chops, and makes one fancy that there must be something wrong with
men on shore because first-class nations cannot be governed like
first-class ships.

The Goldfinder had on board her over a hundred first-class passengers,
and nearly as many of the second class. The life among them was much of
the same kind, though in the second class there was less of idleness,
less of pleasure, and something more of an attempt to continue the
ordinary industry of life. The women worked more and the men read more
than their richer neighbours. But the love-making, and the fashion, and
the mutiny against the fashion, were the same in one set as in the
other. Our friends were at first subjected to an inconvenience which is
always felt in such a position. They were known to have had saloon
rather than second-class antecedents. Everybody had heard that they had
been at Cambridge, and therefore they were at first avoided. And as they
themselves were determined not to seek associates among their more
aristocratic neighbours, they were left to themselves and solitary for
some few days. But this was a condition not at all suited to Dick
Shand's temperament, and it was not long before he had made both male
and female acquaintances.

'Have you observed that woman in the brown straw hat?' Dick said to
Caldigate, one morning, as they were leaning together on the forepart of
the vessel against one of the pens in which the fowls were kept. They
were both dressed according to the parts they were acting, and which
they intended to act, as second-class passengers and future working
miners. Any one knowing in such matters would have seen that they were
over-dressed; for the real miner, when he is away from his work, puts on
his best clothes, and endeavours to look as little rough as possible.
And all this had no doubt been seen and felt, a