e ships, and it's a six weeks' trip. In the tropics you need to be
changing all day if you care a brass farthing for your appearance." He
did not tell her that Marcella's frankness and her lack of conventional
training would ostracize her among the first-class passengers, half of
whom were Government officials and the like going out to Australia or
India, while the rest were self-made Australians going back home after
expensive visits to the Old Country. They moved in airtight
compartments. The exclusive Government folks would not have accepted a
place on a raft that held the self-made colonials even at the risk of
losing their lives. The self-made folks, snubbed and a little hurt, were
rather inclined to be blatantly loud and assertive in self-defence.
Between the two Marcella would be a shuttlecock. But she clinched the
discussion herself by remarking airily that she was going in the
cheapest possible way.

"You shall go second class," said her aunt. "I quite see Dr. Angus's
point about the first-class passengers."

"I'm going third, Aunt. I won't spend money that needn't be spent, and
the third-class part of the ship gets there just as fast as the first!
I'd be uncomfortable among rich folks. I only know poor people, and Dr.
Angus--I'll get on better with third-class people."

The doctor laughed at the implication, and was forced to give in. He
told Aunt Janet that the third class was quite comfortable, though he
really knew nothing about it. He had never been on an emigrant ship in
his life. He arranged for a share in a two-berth cabin quite blithely.

Marcella felt solemn when she finally saw the doctor's machine at the
door waiting for her in the grey dawn light; Jean cried, and Tammas and
Andrew, who were coming in with the tide, seeing the trap crawling
along, ran up a little flag on the masthead to cheer her going. But Aunt
Janet did not cry. She kissed the girl unemotionally and went into the
house, shutting the heavy door with a hollow, echoing clang.

They had some hours to spend in Edinburgh, and got lunch in Princes
Street. It all seemed amazingly big and busy to Marcella, who could not
imagine the use of so many hundreds of people.

"I can't see what they're all here for, doctor," she said as they
sat at a very white and sparkling table in a deep window opposite
the Scott Monument, and the people went to and fro in the absorbed,
uncommunicative Edinburgh way. "They don't seem to be needed."

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