ey so sadly lacked in their own spring-time. He forgets
that perhaps even I have trembled with rage because there was a spot
on my collar, that even I may have spent precious moments folding and
pressing a favourite pair of trousers.

The Mate does not often go ashore nowadays, even to missions, and so
the lavendery smell which exhales from the historic pants scarcely
has time to dissipate before they are back in the chest. Different
now, from his young days, when the vessel lay alongside the _Quai de
la Bourse_ in Rouen City, and my friend stepped across each evening to
the Cafe Victor to drink _creme de menthe_ and feel that listening to
the band was rather wicked and altogether Continental. Indeed, his
attachment to the ship is now proverbial, the prevailing feeling
having been brilliantly epitomised by himself. "If I wash me face,"
he snapped to me one day; "If I wash me face, they think I'm goin'
ashore!" But now the decent double-breasted blue serge, the trim beard
and black bowler hat are in evidence; my friend the Mate is about to
attend divine service at the Seamen's Mission. My own appearance in
_mufti_ causes excitement.

"Ye're comin', Mr. McAlnwick?"

"As far as the door," I reply.

The Chief Officer's blue eyes glint as he wrinkles his nose.

"'Tis my opinion, Mr. McAlnwick, that ye've a young woman in the town
yerself."

And we go forth into the town. At the door of the Mission I bid the
Mate farewell, and I catch a last glimpse of him as he removes his hat
and wipes his boots with the diffidence apparently interwoven in
the fibre of all mariners ashore. He is not of a proselytising
disposition. Strong Orangeman, an Ulster Protestant, and--the rest.
So, thinking of him, I fare onward, watching the show. Men and maidens
idly saunter along, or hasten to the house of God. Why, I wonder, do
girls of religious disposition allow themselves so little time to
dress? Two or three have passed me; one had a button loose at the back
of her dress; another's "stole" of equivocal lace was unsymmetrically
adjusted to her shoulders; and so on. I know that God looketh not on
the outward semblance, but I am also painfully aware that young men
are not fashioned after their Creator in that respect, and my desire
to see everybody married is outraged by these omissions. And looking
into the faces of my fellow-passengers this Sunday evening, I am led
to think that, as a class, girls are not very beautiful objects when
th