"Certainly not, my dear, good, kind Mr.
Badger. Certainly not—" (then, lowering
her voice as she turned to her mother) "by
fire light,"

Neither did Matilda Smith think so by
daylight, when Gabriel Badger appeared at
the altar of Saint George's Church as George
Brackley's best man.

Lest the moral of this truthful narrative
should be overlooked, let me hint how
desirable it is, when you make love, to do so
always in your own person.

STEWARD!

THEY are swilling the decks, I am sure of
it, I said. Swish, swill, rinse, scrub, scrape,
chink, rattle, dribble, THUMP, were the sounds
that awoke me in my bed-tray on board the
Negus, bound for Lisbon. Partly that and
partly a clammy, cold, naked foot that,
belonged to a thin leg which, lowering over from
the tray above me, came down suddenly, like
a Burke and Hare plaister, upon my angry,
protesting, sputtering mouth. It was the leg of
the mild little usher going out to the Lisbon
College. A meek little man he was, who had
exchanged grumbles in dog Latin with me
about the want of air, light, food, cleanliness,
and general comfort all through the rough
nights when the pitching used to awake us
to a sense of the cabin windows being closed,
and to a general black hole atmosphere,
when the one lamp flared and swung in
such a vexed and injured way, and the
Peninsular and Oriental Company's vessel
strained and creaked as if wracked with
rheumatic pains and approaching
dissolution.

I forgave the meek little querulous man
who had a habit of laughing in a dry, bitter,
fretful way at any peculiar aggravation of
our sea-faring miseries. He laughed now
such a laugh, and I knew he must be
squeamish.

"Steward! what are they doing over our
heads at this time in the morning?"

"It's only the men scrubbing the decks!"
I suggested".

"Ha, ha, ONLY. O, yes! it's all right. I
suppose—there goes the captain's watch-chain
again! But never mind, it can't last
for ever. I suppose we shall be in Vigo
to-morrow or next day!"

"There, or thereabouts, sir," says a cheery
voice inside one of the cabin-pantries, going
on to sing,

"I sailed in the good ship, The Kitty."

"Who's that?" said I.

"O, that's that unfeeling steward (ha, ha!)
lively pleasant dog," said the dry-laugher,
Macarthy.

"O, what's a good thing, steward, for
sea-sickness?. I know I shall injure some
vessel."

"Well, don't let it be our vessel, Mr.
Macarthy. Where's that long broom, Tom?"

"Steward!" cries the storekeeper from
his inner bin, and steward, pronouncing a
blessing on the storekeeper, runs off.

"Now, I call that man," said the usher,
"a fellow who would murder you for half-a-crown
—a—but there—well, it won't be long.
I suppose we shall be at Vigo to-morrow or
next day, then Oporto on Thursday."

"Lord love you, if we get to Oporto by
Friday," said the steward, suddenly
re-appearing, "call me tinker. Why, do you
know how far it is from Southampton?"

"Steward!"

"Drat it, this is how I'm pulled about.
Tell the captain. I ain't paid to wait on
him: he's got his own boy; and if this
wind lasts, we may be blowing about the
Bay of Biscay till this time next week."
(Runs off.)

"Ha, ha!" croaked the usher from his
pillow, not seeing that this was said to tease
him.

Steward re-appears.

"Jack, where's my long broom? Drat
that boy, he's in every one's mess and in
nobody's watch, and there's the head steward
who goes about as fine as a scraped carrot,
he,— Why, Mr. Macarthy, I have known the
time as we've beat about four days off the
mouth of the Tagus not able to get in; but
still this time, though the wind is dead
against us, and we're not making six knots
an hour. I think—"

"Stew-ARD!"

"O, yes, call again. That's right—more of
ye?—all at once. I like that, I'll cut
myself in three pieces to oblige you. There's
the captain wanting his coffee this half-hour,
and am I—"

"Rogers, are you coming for these stores?'

"All right. I'm looking after a gentleman
passenger here as is taken unwell" (winks at
me.)

"Let me once get on land again, if you catch
me—"

"Ah, that's what they all say, and yet
they come again, don't they, Mr. Benaset?"
(To a Gibraltar higgler in the next cabin.)

A subterranean voice thunders "Yes!"
and expresses a gentle wish that the steward
may meet with a bad end for keeping
gentlemen so long waiting for breakfast.

But I must sketch the cabin and its
inhabitants. I am in the second-class looking
for character, because nice and respectable
first-class people are not amusing. Our
fellow-passengers are the little grumbling
usher, a small, smooth-faced, vexed little
man, who never gets out of his tray, but
talks to us sinners from this erie, this coign
of vantage resembling the home of the strange
tribe who lived in trees, mentioned by Silius
Italicus. There, on his dark shelf, the little
man cracks feeble jokes about upright men,
drinks to our health; and, immediately after