Here Natalie changed the conversation. This was too bright and beautiful a day to admit of despondency.
"I suppose you love the sea, Mr. Brand?" she said. "All Englishmen do. And yachting—I suppose you go yachting?"
"I have tried it; but it is too tedious for me," said Brand. "The sort of yachting I like is in a vessel of five thousand tons, going three hundred and eighty miles a day. With half a gale of wind in your teeth in the 'rolling Forties,' then there is some fun."
"I must go over to the States very soon," Mr. Lind said.
"Papa!"
"The worst of it is," her father said, without heeding that exclamation of protest, "that I have so much to do that can only be done by word of mouth."
"I wish I could take the message for you," Brand said, lightly. "When the weather looks decent, I very often take a run across to New York, put up for a few days at the Brevoort House, and take the next ship home. It is very enjoyable, especially if you know the officers. Then the bagman—I have acquired a positive love for the bagman."
"The what?" said Natalie.
"The bagman. The 'commy' his friends call him. The commercial traveller, don't you know? He is a most capital fellow—full of life and fun, desperately facetious, delighting in practical jokes: altogether a wonderful creature. You begin to think you are in another generation—before England became melancholy—the generation, for example, that roared over the adventures of Tom and Jerry."