bags, chairs, and hold-alls; the good-byes,
the children held up to the carriage-windows to wave hands, the 'last
looks,' and the tears stopped in their flow by anxiety about luggage and
missing bags. Then came Southampton, the embarkation, and a sort of
enforced cheerfulness and admiration of the ship. Those who had
journeyed down to see friends off adopted a congratulatory tone, as
though the fact of their having already travelled so far in safety was a
sort of assurance that there could be little to fear for the rest of the
voyage.

At last the ship began to move slowly away, and finally swung round and
got out of dock. It was just then that many of the voyagers wished that
they might have had a few minutes longer of that dismal scene in the
drizzling rain, of those dear hand-waving, smiling, or weeping figures on
shore. But the engines had started their solemn beats, the pilot was on
the bridge. The voyage had begun for good or ill, and the Lord watch
over all!

Nigel Christopherson, being a man of feeling, said to a Scot who leaned
over the rails with him, watching a group of female figures dressed in
black on the quay, 'These good-byes are rather beastly, ain't they?'

To which the Scot replied, 'They make no difference to me whatever;' and
the remark, Toffy thought, was an extraordinary check to any emotional
feeling.

Jane got her first letter from Peter dated at Vigo, which peaceful port,
with its rows of white houses built along the shore, and its green hill
with the ruined castle behind, is a haven where many sea-sick passengers
would be. They had had a bit of a tossing, Peter said, in the Bay, and
Toffy had been very seedy but was better. The captain was a very good
sort of fellow, and full of yarns; his cabin was profusely decorated with
foxes' masks and brushes, and a few of his admirers believed that when he
was at home he hunted. The unfeeling Scot, who had declined to
sympathize with Toffy's sensibility to partings, had turned out to be a
very interesting sort of man, and not unamusing. He helped to make the
evenings on deck pass rather pleasantly with his stories. If Mr. Dunbar,
as he was called, had not had such an amazing Scottish accent Peter would
have said that probably the stories were not true. It was a letter such
as a schoolboy might have written, but Jane treasured the ill-expressed
sentiments as maidens of a bygone age may have treasured their lovers'
shields; and although sh