re.

Mme. Rosemilly pretended not to see, not to understand, not to hear.
Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every time the
boat moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter about her
temples.

But father Roland presently called out:

"Look, the _Prince Albert_ is catching us up!"

They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her two raking
funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round cheeks, the
Southampton packet came plowing on at full steam, crowded with
passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels
beating up the water, which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance
of haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut
through the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided
off along the hull.

When it had come quite near the _Pearl_, father Roland lifted his hat,
the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols
eagerly waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she
went on her way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the
still and glassy surface of the sea.

There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from
every part of the horizon toward the short white jetty, which
swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing
barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing
across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster
and slower, toward the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to
have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of
steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their
top-weight of tangled antlers. The hurrying steam-ships flew off to
the right and left over the smooth bosom of the ocean, while sailing
vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which had hauled them out, lay
motionless, dressing themselves from the mainmast to the fore-top in
canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the setting sun.

Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: "Good heavens, how
beautiful the sea is!"

And Mme. Rosemilly replied with a long sigh, which, however, had no
sadness in it:

"Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the same."

Roland exclaimed:

"Look, there is the _Normandie_ just going in. A big ship, isn't she?"

Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the other side
of the mouth of the Seine--that mouth extended over twenty kilometers,
said he. H