quently occupies. He has so
little to do in the working of the ship, taking his regular observations
and working them up with such celerity, that he is rarely in the chart-
room for any length of time. He elects to spend his hours in the main
cabin, not reading, not doing anything save dream with eyes wide open in
the draught of wind that pours through the open ports and door from out
the huge crojack and the jigger staysails.

Miss West is never idle. Below, in the big after-room, she does her own
laundering. Nor will she let the steward touch her father's fine linen.
In the main cabin she has installed a sewing-machine. All
hand-stitching, and embroidering, and fancy work she does in the deck-
chair beside me. She avers that she loves the sea and the atmosphere of
sea-life, yet, verily, she has brought her home-things and land-things
along with her--even to her pretty china for afternoon tea.

Most essentially is she the woman and home-maker. She is a born cook.
The steward and Louis prepare dishes extraordinary and _de luxe_ for the
cabin table; yet Miss West is able at a moment's notice to improve on
these dishes. She never lets any of their dishes come on the table
without first planning them or passing on them. She has quick judgment,
an unerring taste, and is possessed of the needful steel of decision. It
seems she has only to look at a dish, no matter who has cooked it, and
immediately divine its lack or its surplusage, and prescribe a treatment
that transforms it into something indescribably different and
delicious--My, how I do eat! I am quite dumbfounded by the unfailing
voracity of my appetite. Already am I quite convinced that I am glad
Miss West is making the voyage.

She has sailed "out East," as she quaintly calls it, and has an enormous
repertoire of tasty, spicy, Eastern dishes. In the cooking of rice Louis
is a master; but in the making of the accompanying curry he fades into a
blundering amateur compared with Miss West. In the matter of curry she
is a sheer genius. How often one's thoughts dwell upon food when at sea!

So in this trade-wind weather I see a great deal of Miss West. I read
all the time, and quite a good part of the time I read aloud to her
passages, and even books, with which I am interested in trying her out.
Then, too, such reading gives rise to discussions, and she has not yet
uttered anything that would lead me to change my first judgment of her.
She is a genuine