I think, if the feminine voyagers on board the Empress were cruel to this solitary young traveller in not making themselves friendly with her in her loneliness, the unkindness must be put down very much to that unchristian frame of mind in which people who are sea-sick are apt to regard those who are not. This bouncing, bright-faced girl seemed to have little need of kindness from the miserable sufferers around her. So she was left to wander about the deck; now reading three pages of her novel; now doing half-a-dozen stitches of her work; now talking to the man at the wheel, in spite of all injunctions to the contrary; now making herself acquainted with stray pet dogs; always contented, always happy; and no one troubled himself about her.
It was only now, when they were nearing Dieppe, that one of the passengers, an elderly, grey-headed Englishman, spoke to her.
“You are very anxious to arrive,” he said, smiling at her eager face.
“Oh, yes, very anxious, sir. We are nearly there, are we not?”
“Yes, we shall enter the harbour presently. You will have some one to meet you there, I suppose?”
“Oh, no,” the young lady answered, lifting her arched brown eyebrows, “not at Dieppe. Papa will meet me at Paris; but he could never come all the way to Dieppe, just to take me back to Paris. He could never afford such an expense as that.”
“No, to be sure; and you know no one at Dieppe?”
“Oh, no; I don’t know any one in all France, except papa.”
Her face, bright as it was even in repose, was lit up with a new brightness as she spoke of her father.
“You are very fond of your papa, I think,” the Englishman said.