Pleasure seldom lasts long without a check. Shortly before passing the Nore, as evening was coming on, a shower of rain warned the voyagers to seek shelter below. Minnie had not yet seen the place in which two nights were to be passed, and it was with some curiosity that she descended the steep stairway that led to the ladies' cabin.
"What a dark, dull room!" she exclaimed, as she entered and looked around; "and how hot and close it feels! I wish that we could stop all night on deck. Why, where are we to sleep?" she added; "not in those little pigeonholes surely! Are twelve or fourteen ladies to be crowded together in a room no bigger than our parlor, and not nearly so nice and high?"
"These are our berths," said Mrs. Mayne, with a smile, showing to her daughter a little recess, almost perfectly dark, in which were four "pigeonholes," as Minnie called them, two on each side, one above another, each containing a bed; while in the centre was a space only wide enough to turn round in. "The berths on the right hand are ours. You shall have the one over mine."
Minnie laughed at the idea of clambering up to her little nest, though she did not much like its appearance. "And will two other ladies," she asked, "be packed into these tiny berths on the left?"
"No doubt, as the steamer is full."
"I hope they'll be quiet and pleasant," murmured Minnie, who was quite unaccustomed to be brought into such very close contact with strangers. She had scarcely spoken, when Mrs. Lowe and her Jemima came bustling up to the recess.
"What a wretched dark hole it is!" exclaimed the greengrocer's wife, in disgust, as with her dress spreading out like a balloon, she almost entirely blocked up the entrance.
"Mamma, we can't sleep in such a place," cried Jemima. Minnie wondered to herself in what corner the pea-green jacket and plumed hat could be stowed, and for the first time felt glad that her own dress was so simple and plain.
While the Lowes went for their bandboxes and provision bag, Minnie whispered to her mother, "So they are to be our companions in this funny little place! I would rather have had some people not quite so dashing and grand."
Mrs. Mayne smiled to herself at the ignorance of her child, whose eye had been caught by mere outside glitter. "She will know better in time," thought the lady, "and learn to distinguish between tinsel and real gold."