ost people. If I get crossed in some
things, I have to bear it. That is all I am going to say. I have got
other things to do, Miss Wodehouse. I shall never marry anybody all my
life."

"My dear, if you are thrown upon this Mr Chatham for society all the
time of the voyage, and have nobody else to talk to----" said the
prudent interlocutor.

"Then we'll go in another ship," cried Nettie, promptly; "that is easily
managed. I know what it is, a long voyage with three children--they fall
up the cabin-stairs, and they fall down the forecastle; and they give
you twenty frights in a day that they will drop overboard. One does not
have much leisure for anything--not even for thinking, which is a comfort
sometimes," added Nettie, confidentially, to herself.

"It depends upon what you think of, whether thinking is a comfort or
not," said good Miss Wodehouse. "When I think of you young people, and
all the perplexities you get into! There is Lucy now, vexed with Mr
Wentworth about something--oh, nothing worth mentioning; and there was
poor Dr Rider! How he did look behind him, to be sure, as he went past
St Roque's! I daresay it was you he was looking for, Nettie. I wish you
and he could have fancied each other, and come to some arrangement about
poor Mr Fred's family--to give them so much to live on, or something. I
assure you, when I begin to think over such things, and how perverse
both people and circumstances are, thinking is very little comfort to
me."

Miss Wodehouse drew a long sigh, and was by no means disinclined to cry
over her little companion. Though she was the taller of the two, she
leant upon Nettie's firm little fairy arm as they went up the quiet road.
Already the rapid winter twilight had fallen, and before them, in the
distance, glimmered the lights of Carlingford--foremost among which
shone conspicuous the large placid white lamp (for professional reds and
blues were beneath his dignity) which mounted guard at Dr Marjoribanks's
garden gate. Those lights, beginning to shine through the evening
darkness, gave a wonderful look of home to the place. Instinctively
there occurred to Nettie's mind a vision of how it would be on the sea,
with a wide dark ocean heaving around the solitary speck on its breast.
It did not matter! If a silent sob arose in her heart, it found no
utterance. Might not Edward Rider have made that suggestion which had
occurred only to Miss Wodehouse? Why did it never come into his head
tha