nd I, moving in a sort of bewildered dream, found ourselves
ascending one of these walks. At its end was another doorway and,
beyond, a great room, with more elevators and a mosaic floor, and
mahogany and gilt and gorgeousness, and silk and broadcloth and satin.

Hephzy gasped and stopped short.

"It IS a mistake, Hosy!" she cried. "Where is the steamer?"

I smiled. I felt almost as "green" and bewildered as she, but I tried
not to show my feelings.

"It is all right, Hephzy," I answered. "This is the steamer. I know it
doesn't look like one, but it is. This is the 'Plutonia' and we are on
board at last."

Two hours later we leaned together over the rail and watched the lights
of New York grow fainter behind us.

Hephzibah drew a deep breath.

"It is so," she said. "It is really so. We ARE, aren't we, Hosy."

"We are," said I. "There is no doubt of it."

"I wonder what will happen to us before we see those lights again."

"I wonder."

"Do you think HE--Do you think Little Frank--"

"Hephzy," I interrupted, "if we are going to bed at all before morning,
we had better start now."

"All right, Hosy. But you mustn't say 'go to bed.' Say 'turn in.'
Everyone calls going to bed 'turning in' aboard a vessel."

CHAPTER V

In Which We View, and Even Mingle Slightly with, the Upper Classes

It is astonishing--the ease with which the human mind can accustom
itself to the unfamiliar and hitherto strange. Nothing could have been
more unfamiliar or strange to Hephzibah and me than an ocean voyage and
the "Plutonia." And yet before three days of that voyage were at an end
we were accustomed to both--to a degree. We had learned to do certain
things and not to do others. Some pet illusions had been shattered,
and new and, at first, surprising items of information had lost their
newness and come to be accepted as everyday facts.

For example, we learned that people in real life actually wore monocles,
something, which I, of course, had known to be true but which had seemed
nevertheless an unreality, part of a stage play, a "dress-up" game for
children and amateur actors. The "English swell" in the performances of
the Bayport Dramatic Society always wore a single eyeglass, but he also
wore Dundreary whiskers and clothes which would have won him admittance
to the Home for Feeble-Minded Youth without the formality of an
examination. His "English accent" was a combination of the East Bayport
twang and an Irish brogu