The stewardess knocked. “Would I come into the nursery?” (as we called our children’s cabin), “the children absolutely refused to be dressed.” I threw on a dressing-gown and crossed the narrow passage. My two elder babies were crowding each other from the port-hole, and the four-month-old bairn was kicking and clutching at the kind hands that were trying to dress her. Outside, beneath the port-hole, was a small native boat. It was full of fruit which the natives were reaching up to my eager-handed children. Another boat, laden with shells, was trying to push the fruit boat away. A dozen other boats were crowded about these two, and fifty Cingalese were crying—“Buy, buy, buy!” I threw out a bit of silver in payment for the bananas and oranges my infants were devouring. I took a firm clutch of their night gowns and pulled them down. The stewardess closed the port-hole, and we three women gradually persuaded the three babies into their different costumes. The children were taken on deck, where their father was. I went back to my cabin to dress. A Cingalese man had his head thrust well inside my port-hole. His fine aquiline features were covered-with a rich brown skin. His long black hair was twisted into a small but prominent knob at the back of his square head. In the knob was thrust eight inches of convex tortoise-shell, which in the bright sunshine of the early morning sparkled like a queen’s coronet.
“Salaam, beautiful English lady!” he cried before my astonishment had let me speak; “I bring you many beautiful silk—much beautiful sapphire, pearls, not white as your neck, but white as the neck of another.” He threw a square foot of morocco at my naked feet. I picked it up to throw it back, but it opened and I held it a moment. I had seen the Mediterranean when it was good-humoured, and the sky in Italy. I never saw blue until I looked into that leather casket of rings. Oh! those sapphires, cunningly relieved here and there by a glinting cat’s-eye, or a gleaming pearl!
“Go away,” I said, handing up the box, “I’m not dressed.”
“Beautiful English lady, buy,” he replied, ignoring his gems. I glanced into the diminutive P. and O. mirror. My nose was sunburnt; my hair was in curl papers. I have seen uglier women, but not many. That naturally annoyed me.
“Take your rubbish away,” I said sharply. “I don’t want. I’ve no money.”
The first statement was untrue. I did want them. Only a blind woman could look on Ceylon sapphires without longing to wear them. With the poetic sense peculiar to the East, it was my last and true statement that he disregarded.
“Lady take one ring, two ring, six ring. I come hotel get money.”
“I’m going to London,” I said, lying glibly. I was anxious to get on deck. I wanted to dress.
“Lady send me money from London. I trust. No English sir, no English madame, cheat poor native man.”
I have heard English honour upheld in Westminster. I have heard it praised directly and indirectly by almost all the peoples in Europe and in America. But, to me, this was the establishment of English honour. And it was so all over the East. I was not an Englishwoman, but I was the next best thing, the wife of an Englishman, and I could buy on credit half the curios in the East, if I wished.