The etiquette of valediction at the sailing of a great ship varies with the three classes of passenger. The friends of cabin passengers accept a final drink, say good-bye, leave the ship, and are no more seen. The friends and relations of the second class—and they are all there—line up along the landing-stage and maintain a running fire of chaff and invective until the ship has been warped out into the stream and the engines begin to run. The steerage and their friends, being mainly aliens and knowing no better, weep and howl.
Philip knew that the second-class passengers were on the deck below him; but as he could not see them (though he could hear them) his attention wandered to the throng which was engaging them in conversation. They were of many types. There were people who shouted cheerfully, "Well, send us a line when you get there!" and then, after a laborious attempt to discover another topic, cried despairingly, "Well, don't forget to write!" And so on. "Give my love to Milly when you see her," commanded a stout matron in bugles, "and say I hope her cold is better."
Farther along, a girl with tears raining down her cheeks was more than holding her own in an exchange of biting personalities with a grimy gentleman at a porthole—apparently her fiancé—whom she had come to see off. A comic man, mistaking a blast upon the siren for a definite indication that the moment of departure had arrived, took out a dirty pocket-handkerchief and wept loudly, periodically squeezing the handkerchief dry and beginning again. But it was a false alarm: the ship did not move; and his performance, which was to have been the crowning effort of a strenuously humorous morning, continued perforce to halt lamely along for another ten minutes. Finally, in response to an urgent appeal from a matter-of-fact lady friend that he would not act the goat, the unfortunate gentleman, submitting to the fate of all those whose enterprises are born out of due time, put his handkerchief sheepishly in his pocket and took no further part in the proceedings.
At last the Bosphorus swung clear. There was a jingle of bells deep down in the engine-room, followed by a responsive throb of life throughout the hitherto inert mass of the great vessel. The voyage had begun.
The crowd on the landing-stage broke into a cheer, which was answered from all parts of the ship. As the sound died away a girl stepped forward and waved her handkerchief for the last time. She was a short girl, with a pleasant face, and wore glasses.
"Good-bye, Lil, dear!" she cried.
There was an answering flutter from directly below where Philip stood, and a clear voice replied:—
"Good-bye, May, darling!"
Philip scrutinised the girl on the landing-stage.
"Who on earth is that?" he said to himself. Then he remembered. It was Miss May Jennings, sister of Miss Lil Jennings, typist at the office in Oxford Street.