s. She asked if
he had met any one else he knew, and he was able to tell her that there
seemed to be a good many swells on board, and this cheered her very
much, though he did not know them; she liked to be near the rose, though
it was not a flower that she really cared for.

She did not ask who the swells were, and March took no trouble to find
out. He took no trouble to get a passenger-list, and he had the more
trouble when he tried at last; the lists seemed to have all vanished,
as they have a habit of doing, after the first day; the one that he made
interest for with the head steward was a second-hand copy, and had no
one he knew in it but the Eltwins. The social solitude, however, was
rather favorable to certain other impressions. There seemed even more
elderly people than there were on the Norumbia; the human atmosphere was
gray and sober; there was nothing of the gay expansion of the outward
voyage; there was little talking or laughing among those autumnal men
who were going seriously and anxiously home, with faces fiercely set for
the coming grapple; or necks meekly bowed for the yoke. They had eaten
their cake, and it had been good, but there remained a discomfort in the
digestion. They sat about in silence, and March fancied that the flown
summer was as dreamlike to each of them as it now was to him. He hated
to be of their dreary company, but spiritually he knew that he was of
it; and he vainly turned to cheer himself with the younger passengers.
Some matrons who went about clad in furs amused him, for they must have
been unpleasantly warm in their jackets and boas; nothing but the hope
of being able to tell the customs inspector with a good conscience that
the things had been worn, would have sustained one lady draped from head
to foot in Astrakhan.

They were all getting themselves ready for the fray or the play of the
coming winter; but there seemed nothing joyous in the preparation. There
were many young girls, as there always are everywhere, but there were
not many young men, and such as there were kept to the smoking-room.
There was no sign of flirtation among them; he would have given much for
a moment of the pivotal girl, to see whether she could have brightened
those gloomy surfaces with her impartial lamp. March wished that he
could have brought some report from the outer world to cheer his wife,
as he descended to their state-room. They had taken what they could get
at the eleventh hour, and they