virgin days, that the future could ever contain a week when her
Charles would decline to shave more than once, and then have it done for
him on a Sunday!

She hesitated, for she had her thoughts--doubts she disdained to call
them--but still he forgot once to draw his boots sideways, after having
purged the toe and heel, across the bristle of her father's mat. With
the quick eye of love he perceived her frown, and the very next day he
conquered her. His scheme was unworthy, as it substituted corporate for
personal purity; still it succeeded, as unworthy schemes will do. On the
birthday of his sacred Majesty, Charles took Matilda to see his ship,
the 48-gun frigate Immaculate, commanded by a well-known martinet. Her
spirit fell within her, like the Queen of Sheba's, as she gazed, but
trembled to set down foot upon the trim order and the dazzling choring.
She might have survived the strict purity of all things, the deck lines
whiter than Parian marble, the bulwarks brighter than the cheek-piece of
a grate, the breeches of the guns like goodly gold, and not a whisker
of a rope's end curling the wrong way, if only she could have espied a
swab, or a bucket, or a flake of holy-stone, or any indicament of labor
done. "Artis est celare artem;" this art was unfathomable.

Matilda was fain to assure herself that the main part of this might be
superficial, like a dish-cover polished with the spots on, and she lost
her handkerchief on purpose to come back and try a little test-work
of her own. This was a piece of unstopped knotting in the panel of a
hatchway, a resinous hole that must catch and keep any speck of dust
meandering on the wayward will of wind. Her cambric came out as white as
it went in!

She surrendered at discretion, and became the prize of Carroway.

Now people at Bridlington Quay declared that the lieutenant, though he
might have carried off a prize, was certainly not the prize-master; and
they even went so far as to say that "he could scarcely call his soul
his own." The matter was no concern of theirs, neither were their
conclusions true. In little things the gallant officer, for the sake of
discipline and peace, submitted to due authority; and being so much from
home, he left all household matters to a firm control. In return for
this, he was always thought of first, and the best of everything was
kept for him, and Mrs. Carroway quoted him to others as a wonder, though
she may not have done so to himself. And