The steamer backed and brought poor Uncle William within earshot again.
"I was telling Mary that just about here you carried her ashore," Mrs. Fawcus called to her husband.
"Sunt lacrimæ rerum," he chanted, and, when this time the paddles churned up the water in earnest, Mr. Fawcus buried his face in a bandana handkerchief and waved a limp glove from the receding shore, a limp glove that pathetically expressed the condition of mind and body to which its owner was by now reduced.
The journey was too full of excitement for Mary to be long saddened by the vision of Mr. Fawcus on the quay. Most children remember their first Channel crossing; but this great event in Mary's case was made doubly noteworthy from its being the only adventure of any importance she had ever known, so placid had been her life in that Paternoster Row basement.
"Ah, you wouldn't be dancing about quite so gaily, Miss, if you could remember the first time you was on the sea," said Mrs. Fawcus. "Still, I'm bound to say you behaved very well then, all considering. Though why you didn't die of that perishing wind I'm sure I don't know, and that's a fact."
"Shall we be wrecked to-day, Aunt Lucy?"
"For the love of mercy, don't talk of such things," Mrs. Fawcus begged. "If you feel sick, chew a bit of lemon peel and let it come. Don't be afraid. Them as manages this boat have seen thousands of people sick. They don't consider it any more than blowing the nose, as you might say."
But Mary was not sick, and when Mrs. Fawcus came back to Paternoster Row she told her husband of this convincing indication of a mysterious bond between Mary and the sea.
"If I have a window-box in Paris," said Mary, when the chalk cliffs of England were become ghosts in the mist, "I shall plant sweet williams, because Uncle William is sweet, isn't he, Aunt Lucy?"
"Bless your heart, my little treasure," Mrs. Fawcus exclaimed as she clasped Mary to her heart. "It'll be meat and drink to poor Uncle William to hear that."