hrough the oval
openings in the centre they looked down into the lower saloon and up into
the music-room, as thickly thronged with breakfasters. The tables were
brightened with the bouquets and the floral designs of ships, anchors,
harps, and doves sent to the lady passengers, and at one time the Marches
thought they were going to be put before a steam-yacht realized to the
last detail in blue and white violets. The ports of the saloon were open,
and showed the level sea; the ship rode with no motion except the tremor
from her screws. The sound of talking and laughing rose with the clatter
of knives and forks and the clash of crockery; the homely smell of the
coffee and steak and fish mixed with the spice of the roses and
carnations; the stewards ran hither and thither, and a young foolish joy
of travel welled up in the elderly hearts of the pair. When the head
steward turned out the swivel-chairs where they were to sit they both
made an inclination toward the people already at table, as if it had been
a company at some far-forgotten table d'hote in the later sixties. The
head steward seemed to understand as well as speak English, but the
table-stewards had only an effect of English, which they eked out with
"Bleace!" for all occasions of inquiry, apology, or reassurance, as the
equivalent of their native "Bitte!" Otherwise there was no reason to
suppose that they did not speak German, which was the language of a good
half of the passengers. The stewards looked English, however, in
conformity to what seems the ideal of every kind of foreign seafaring
people, and that went a good way toward making them intelligible.

March, to whom his wife mainly left their obeisance, made it so tentative
that if it should meet no response he could feel that it had been nothing
more than a forward stoop, such as was natural in sitting down. He need
not really have taken this precaution; those whose eyes he caught more or
less nodded in return.

A nice-looking boy of thirteen or fourteen, who had the place on the left
of the lady in the sofa seat under the port, bowed with almost
magisterial gravity, and made the lady on the sofa smile, as if she were
his mother and understood him. March decided that she had been some time
a widow; and he easily divined that the young couple on her right had
been so little time husband and wife that they would rather not have it
known. Next them was a young lady whom he did not at first think so
good-lo