in her house, and
expected of every one the best they could do, but no more.

It was the easiest thing in the world to grant another room, and the
problem of sheets simultaneously and miraculously solved itself, the
spots and ladders not being past cure after all, but--

"Lies! Lies! Lies!" exclaimed the mistress indignantly, as she ran up on
to the deck. "What's the use of telling me lies?"

In her anger that a woman of fifty should behave like a child and come
cringing to a girl because she wanted to sit where she had not leave to
sit, she did not think of the particular case, and, unpacking her music,
soon forgot all about the old woman and her sheets.

Mrs. Chailey folded her sheets, but her expression testified to flatness
within. The world no longer cared about her, and a ship was not a home.
When the lamps were lit yesterday, and the sailors went tumbling above
her head, she had cried; she would cry this evening; she would cry
to-morrow. It was not home. Meanwhile she arranged her ornaments in the
room which she had won too easily. They were strange ornaments to
bring on a sea voyage--china pugs, tea-sets in miniature, cups stamped
floridly with the arms of the city of Bristol, hair-pin boxes crusted
with shamrock, antelopes' heads in coloured plaster, together with a
multitude of tiny photographs, representing downright workmen in their
Sunday best, and women holding white babies. But there was one portrait
in a gilt frame, for which a nail was needed, and before she sought it
Mrs. Chailey put on her spectacles and read what was written on a slip
of paper at the back:

"This picture of her mistress is given to Emma Chailey by Willoughby
Vinrace in gratitude for thirty years of devoted service."

Tears obliterated the words and the head of the nail.

"So long as I can do something for your family," she was saying, as she
hammered at it, when a voice called melodiously in the passage:

"Mrs. Chailey! Mrs. Chailey!"

Chailey instantly tidied her dress, composed her face, and opened the
door.

"I'm in a fix," said Mrs. Ambrose, who was flushed and out of breath.
"You know what gentlemen are. The chairs too high--the tables too
low--there's six inches between the floor and the door. What I want's
a hammer, an old quilt, and have you such a thing as a kitchen table?
Anyhow, between us"--she now flung open the door of her husband's
sitting room, and revealed Ridley pacing up and down, his forehead all
wrin