"Yes, sir," said the Tyro miserably.
"But there's no reason why you shouldn't write a note if you think fit."
"So there isn't!" The Tyro brightened amazingly. "I'll do it now."
But that note was never delivered. For, coming on deck after writing it, its author met Little Miss Grouch face to face, and was the recipient of a cut so direct, so coldly smiling, so patent to all the ship-world, so indicative of permanent and hopeless unconsciousness of his existence, that he tore up the epistle and a playful porpoise rolled the fragments deep into the engulfing ocean. Perhaps it was just as well, for, as Judge Enderby remarked that night to his friend Dr. Alderson, while the two old hard-faced soft-hearts sat smoking their good-night cigar over the Tyro's troubles, in the course of a dissertation which would have vastly astonished his confrères of the metropolitan bar:—
"It's fortunate that the course of true love never does run smooth. If it did, marriages would have to be made chiefly in heaven. Mighty few of them would get themselves accomplished on earth. For love is, by nature, an obstacle race. Run on the flat, without any difficulties, it would lose its zest both for pursuer and pursued, and Judge Cupid would as well shut up court and become an advocate of race suicide. But as for that spade lead, Alderson—are you listening?"
"She's a devilishly pretty girl," grunted Dr. Alderson.
V
Fifth day out.
A dull, dead, blank unprofitable calm.
Nothing doing; nothing to do.
Wish I'd gone steerage.