The weather held fine. The sun shone, and the friendly winds blew out
of a cloudless heaven; by night the moon ruled a firmament powdered with
stars of multitudinous splendor. The conditions inspired Dunham with a
restless fertility of invention in Lydia's behalf. He had heard of the
game of shuffle-board, that blind and dumb croquet, with which the jaded
passengers on the steamers appease their terrible leisure, and with the
help of the ship's carpenter he organized this pastime, and played it
with her hour after hour, while Staniford looked on and smoked in grave
observance, and Hicks lurked at a distance, till Dunham felt it on
his kind heart and tender conscience to invite him to a share in the
diversion. As his nerves recovered their tone, Hicks showed himself a
man of some qualities that Staniford would have liked in another man:
he was amiable, and he was droll, though apt to turn sulky if Staniford
addressed him, which did not often happen. He knew more than Dunham of
shuffle-board, as well as of tossing rings of rope over a peg set up a
certain space off in the deck,--a game which they eagerly took up in the
afternoon, after pushing about the flat wooden disks all the morning.
Most of the talk at the table was of the varying fortunes of the
players; and the yarn of the story-teller in the forecastle remained
half-spun, while the sailors off watch gathered to look on, and to bet
upon Lydia's skill. It puzzled Staniford to make out whether she felt
any strangeness in the situation, which she accepted with so much
apparent serenity. Sometimes, in his frequently recurring talks with
Dunham, he questioned whether their delicate precautions for saving her
feelings were not perhaps thrown away upon a young person who played
shuffle-board and ring-toss on the deck of the Aroostook with as much
self-possession as she would have played croquet on her native turf at
South Bradfield.
“Their ideal of propriety up country is very different from ours,” he
said, beginning one of his long comments. “I don't say that it concerns
the conscience more than ours does; but they think evil of different
things. We're getting Europeanized,--I don't mean you, Dunham; in spite
of your endeavors you will always remain one of the most hopelessly
American of our species,--and we have our little borrowed anxieties
about the free association of young people. They have none whatever;
though they are apt to look suspiciously upon married people's
friendships with other people's wives and husbands. It's quite likely
that Lurella, with the traditions of her queer world, has not
imagined anything anomalous in her position. She may realize certain
inconveniences. But she must see great advantages in it. Poor girl!
How she must be rioting on the united devotion of cabin and forecastle,
after the scanty gallantries of a hill town peopled by elderly unmarried
women! I'm glad of it, for her sake. I wonder which she really prizes
most: your ornate attentions, or the uncouth homage of those sailors,
who are always running to fetch her rings and blocks when she makes
a wild shot. I believe I don't care and shouldn't disapprove of her
preference, whichever it was.” Staniford frowned before he added: “But
I object to Hicks and his drolleries. It's impossible for that little
wretch to think reverently of a young girl; it's shocking to see her
treating him as if he were a gentleman.” Hicks's behavior really gave no
grounds for reproach; and it was only his moral mechanism, as Staniford
called the character he constructed for him, which he could blame;
nevertheless, the thought of him gave an oblique cast to Staniford's
reflections, which he cut short by saying, “This sort of worship is
every woman's due in girlhood; but I suppose a fortnight of it will make
her a pert and silly coquette. What does she say to your literature,
Dunham?”
Dunham had already begun to lend Lydia books,--his own and
Staniford's,--in which he read aloud to her, and chose passages for her
admiration; but he was obliged to report that she had rather a passive
taste in literature. She seemed to like what he said was good, but not
to like it very much, or to care greatly for reading; or else she had
never had the habit of talking books. He suggested this to Staniford,
who at once philosophized it.
“Why, I rather like that, you know. We all read in such a literary way,
now; we don't read simply for the joy or profit of it; we expect to talk
about it, and say how it is this and that; and I've no doubt that we're
sub-consciously harassed, all the time, with an automatic process of
criticism. Now Lurella, I fancy, reads with the sense of the days when
people read in private, and not in public, as we do. She believes that
your serious books are all true; and she knows that my novels are all
lies--that's what some excellent Christians would call the fiction even
of George Eliot or of Hawthorne; she would be ashamed to discuss the
lives and loves of heroes and heroines who never existed. I think that's
first-rate. She must wonder at your distempered interest in them. If
one could get at it, I suppose the fresh wholesomeness of Lurella's mind
would be something delicious,--a quality like spring water.”
He was one of those men who cannot rest in regard to people they meet
till they have made some effort to formulate them. He liked to ticket
them off; but when he could not classify them, he remained content with
his mere study of them. His habit was one that does not promote sympathy
with one's fellow creatures. He confessed even that it disposed him to
wish for their less acquaintance when once he had got them generalized;
they became then collected specimens. Yet, for the time being, his
curiosity in them gave him a specious air of sociability. He lamented
the insincerity which this involved, but he could not help it. The next
novelty in character was as irresistible as the last; he sat down before
it till it yielded its meaning, or suggested to him some analogy by
which he could interpret it.
With this passion for the arrangement and distribution of his neighbors,
it was not long before he had placed most of the people on board in what
he called the psychology of the ship. He did not care that they should
fit exactly in their order. He rather preferred that they should have
idiosyncrasies which differentiated them from their species, and he
enjoyed Lydia's being a little indifferent about books for this and for
other reasons. “If she were literary, she would be like those vulgar
little persons of genius in the magazine stories. She would have read
all sorts of impossible things up in her village. She would have
been discovered by some aesthetic summer boarder, who had happened to
identify her with the gifted Daisy Dawn, and she would be going out on
the aesthetic's money for the further expansion of her spirit in Europe.
Somebody would be obliged to fall in love with her, and she would
sacrifice her career for a man who was her inferior, as we should be
subtly given to understand at the close. I think it's going to be as
distinguished by and by not to like books as it is not to write them.
Lurella is a prophetic soul; and if there's anything comforting about
her, it's her being so merely and stupidly pretty.”
“She is not merely and stupidly pretty!” retorted Dunham. “She never
does herself justice when you are by. She can talk very well, and on
some subjects she thinks strongly.”
“Oh, I'm sorry for that!” said Staniford. “But call me some time when
she's doing herself justice.”
“I don't mean that she's like the women we know. She doesn't say witty
things, and she hasn't their responsive quickness; but her ideas are
her own, no matter how old they are; and what she says she seems to
be saying for the first time, and as if it had never been thought out
before.”
“That is what I have been contending for,” said Staniford; “that is what
I meant by spring water. It is that thrilling freshness which charms
me in Lurella.” He laughed. “Have you converted her to your spectacular
faith, yet?” Dunham blushed. “You have tried,” continued Staniford.
“Tell me about it!”
“I will not talk with you on such matters,” said Dunham, “till you know
how to treat serious things seriously.”
“I shall know how when I realize that they are serious with you. Well, I
don't object to a woman's thinking strongly on religious subjects: it's
the only safe ground for her strong thinking, and even there she had
better feel strongly. Did you succeed in convincing her that Archbishop
Laud was a _saint incompris_, and the good King Charles a blessed
martyr.”
Dunham did not answer till he had choked down some natural resentment.
He had, several years earlier, forsaken the pale Unitarian worship of
his family, because, Staniford always said, he had such a feeling for
color, and had adopted an extreme tint of ritualism. It was rumored at
one time, before his engagement to Miss Hibbard, that he was going to
unite with a celibate brotherhood; he went regularly into retreat at
certain seasons, to the vast entertainment of his friend; and, within
the bounds of good taste, he was a zealous propagandist of his faith,
of which he had the practical virtues in high degree. “I hope,” he
said presently, “that I know how to respect convictions, even of those
adhering to the Church in Error.”
Staniford laughed again. “I see you have not converted Lurella. Well,
I like that in her, too. I wish I could have the arguments, _pro_ and
_con_. It would have been amusing. I suppose,” he pondered aloud, “that
she is a Calvinist of the deepest dye, and would regard me as a lost
spirit for being outside of her church. She would look down upon me from
one height, as I look down upon her from another. And really, as far as
personal satisfaction in superiority goes, she might have the advantage
of me. That's very curious, very interesting.”
As the first week wore away, the wonted incidents of a sea voyage lent
their variety to the life on board. One day the ship ran into a school
of whales, which remained heavily thumping and lolling about in her
course, and blowing jets of water into the air, like so many breaks in
garden hose, Staniford suggested. At another time some flying-fish came
on board. The sailors caught a dolphin, and they promised a shark, by
and by. All these things were turned to account for the young girl's
amusement, as if they had happened for her. The dolphin died that she
might wonder and pity his beautiful death; the cook fried her some of
the flying-fish; some one was on the lookout to detect even porpoises
for her. A sail in the offing won the discoverer envy when he pointed
it out to her; a steamer, celebrity. The captain ran a point out of
his course to speak to a vessel, that she might be able to tell what
speaking a ship at sea was like.
At table the stores which the young men had laid in for private use
became common luxuries, and she fared sumptuously every day upon
dainties which she supposed were supplied by the ship,--delicate jellies
and canned meats and syruped fruits; and, if she wondered at anything,
she must have wondered at the scrupulous abstinence with which Captain
Jenness, seconded by Mr. Watterson, refused the luxuries which his
bounty provided them, and at the constancy with which Staniford declined
some of these dishes, and Hicks declined others. Shortly after the
latter began more distinctly to be tolerated, he appeared one day on
deck with a steamer-chair in his hand, and offered it to Lydia's use,
where she sat on a stool by the bulwark. After that, as she reclined in
this chair, wrapped in her red shawl, and provided with a book or some
sort of becoming handiwork, she was even more picturesquely than
before the centre about which the ship's pride and chivalrous sentiment
revolved. They were Americans, and they knew how to worship a woman.
Staniford did not seek occasions to please and amuse her, as the others
did. When they met, as they must, three times a day, at table, he took
his part in the talk, and now and then addressed her a perfunctory
civility. He imagined that she disliked him, and he interested himself
in imagining the ignorant grounds of her dislike. “A woman,” he said,
“must always dislike some one in company; it's usually another woman; as
there's none on board, I accept her enmity with meekness.” Dunham wished
to persuade him that he was mistaken. “Don't try to comfort me, Dunham,”
he replied. “I find a pleasure in being detested which is inconceivable
to your amiable bosom.”
Dunham turned to go below, from where they stood at the head of the
cabin stairs. Staniford looked round, and saw Lydia, whom they had kept
from coming up; she must have heard him. He took his cigar from his
mouth, and caught up a stool, which he placed near the ship's side,
where Lydia usually sat, and without waiting for her concurrence got a
stool for himself, and sat down with her.
“Well, Miss Blood,” he said, “it's Saturday afternoon at last, and we're
at the end of our first week. Has it seemed very long to you?”
Lydia's color was bright with consciousness, but the glance she gave
Staniford showed him looking tranquilly and honestly at her. “Yes,” she
said, “it _has_ seemed long.”
“That's merely the strangeness of everything. There's nothing like local
familiarity to make the time pass,--except monotony; and one gets both
at sea. Next week will go faster than this, and we shall all be at
Trieste before we know it. Of course we shall have a storm or two, and
that will retard us in fact as well as fancy. But you wouldn't feel that
you'd been at sea if you hadn't had a storm.”
He knew that his tone was patronizing, but he had theorized the girl so
much with a certain slight in his mind that he was not able at once
to get the tone which he usually took towards women. This might not,
indeed, have pleased some women any better than patronage: it mocked
while it caressed all their little pretenses and artificialities; he
addressed them as if they must be in the joke of themselves, and did not
expect to be taken seriously. At the same time he liked them greatly,
and would not on any account have had the silliest of them different
from what she was. He did not seek them as Dunham did; their society was
not a matter of life or death with him; but he had an elder-brotherly
kindness for the whole sex.
Lydia waited awhile for him to say something more, but he added nothing,
and she observed, with a furtive look: “I presume you've seen some very
severe storms at sea.”
“No,” Staniford answered, “I haven't. I've been over several times,
but I've never seen anything alarming. I've experienced the ordinary
seasickening tempestuousness.”
“Have you--have you ever been in Italy?” asked Lydia, after another
pause.
“Yes,” he said, “twice; I'm very fond of Italy.” He spoke of it in a
familiar tone that might well have been discouraging to one of her total
unacquaintance with it. Presently he added of his own motion, looking
at her with his interest in her as a curious study, “You're going to
Venice, I think Mr. Dunham told me.”
“Yes,” said Lydia.
“Well, I think it's rather a pity that you shouldn't arrive there
directly, without the interposition of Trieste.” He scanned her yet more
closely, but with a sort of absence in his look, as if he addressed some
ideal of her.
“Why?” asked Lydia, apparently pushed to some self-assertion by this way
of being looked and talked at.
“It's the strangest place in the world,” said Staniford; and then he
mused again. “But I suppose--” He did not go on, and the word fell again
to Lydia.
“I'm going to visit my aunt, who is staying there. She was where I live,
last summer, and she told us about it. But I couldn't seem to understand
it.”
“No one can understand it, without seeing it.”
“I've read some descriptions of it,” Lydia ventured.
“They're of no use,--the books.”
“Is Trieste a strange place, too?”
“It's strange, as a hundred other places are,--and it's picturesque; but
there's only one Venice.”
“I'm afraid sometimes,” she faltered, as if his manner in regard to this
peculiar place had been hopelessly exclusive, “that it will be almost
too strange.”
“Oh, that's another matter,” said Staniford. “I confess I should be
rather curious to know whether you liked Venice. I like it, but I can
imagine myself sympathizing with people who detested it,--if they said
so. Let me see what will give you some idea of it. Do you know Boston
well?”
“No; I've only been there twice,” Lydia acknowledged.
“Then you've never seen the Back Bay by night, from the Long Bridge.
Well, let me see--”
“I'm afraid,” interposed Lydia, “that I've not been about enough for you
to give me an idea from other places. We always go to Greenfield to do
our trading; and I've been to Keene and Springfield a good many times.”
“I'm sorry to say I haven't,” said Staniford. “But I'll tell you: Venice
looks like an inundated town. If you could imagine those sunset clouds
yonder turned marble, you would have Venice as she is at sunset. You
must first think of the sea when you try to realize the place. If you
don't find the sea too strange, you won't find Venice so.”
“I wish it would ever seem half as home-like!” cried the girl.
“Then you find the ship--I'm glad you find the ship--home-like,” said
Staniford, tentatively.
“Oh, yes; everything is so convenient and pleasant. It seems sometimes
as if I had always lived here.”
“Well, that's very nice,” assented Staniford, rather blankly. “Some
people feel a little queer at sea--in the beginning. And you haven't--at
all?” He could not help this leading question, yet he knew its meanness,
and felt remorse for it.
“Oh, _I_ did, at first,” responded the girl, but went no farther; and
Staniford was glad of it. After all, why should he care to know what was
in her mind?
“Captain Jenness,” he merely said, “understands making people at home.”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” assented Lydia. “And Mr. Watterson is very agreeable,
and Mr. Mason. I didn't suppose sailors were so. What soft, mild voices
they have!”
“That's the speech of most of the Down East coast people.”
“Is it? I like it better than our voices. Our voices are so sharp and
high, at home.”
“It's hard to believe that,” said Staniford, with a smile.
Lydia looked at him. “Oh, I wasn't born in South Bradfield. I was ten
years old when I went there to live.”
“Where _were_ you born, Miss Blood?” he asked.
“In California. My father had gone out for his health, but he died
there.”
“Oh!” said Staniford. He had a book in his hand, and he began to
scribble a little sketch of Lydia's pose, on a fly-leaf. She looked
round and saw it. “You've detected me,” he said; “I haven't any right to
keep your likeness, now. I must make you a present of this work of art,
Miss Blood.” He finished the sketch with some ironical flourishes, and
made as if to tear out the leaf.
“Oh!” cried Lydia, simply, “you will spoil the book!”
“Then the book shall go with the picture, if you'll let it,” said
Staniford.
“Do you mean to give it to me?” she asked, with surprise.
“That was my munificent intention. I want to write your name in it.
What's the initial of your first name, Miss Blood?”
“L, thank you,” said Lydia.
Staniford gave a start. “No!” he exclaimed. It seemed a fatality.
“My name is Lydia,” persisted the girl. “What letter should it begin
with?”
“Oh--oh, I knew Lydia began with an L,” stammered Staniford, “but
I--I--I thought your first name was--”
“What?” asked Lydia sharply.
“I don't know. Lily,” he answered guiltily.
“Lily _Blood_!” cried the girl. “Lydia is bad enough; but _Lily_ Blood!
They couldn't have been such fools!”
“I beg your pardon. Of course not. I don't know how I could have got the
idea. It was one of those impressions--hallucinations--” Staniford found
himself in an attitude of lying excuse towards the simple girl, over
whom he had been lording it in satirical fancy ever since he had seen
her, and meekly anxious that she should not be vexed with him. He began
to laugh at his predicament, and she smiled at his mistake. “What is the
date?” he asked.
“The 15th,” she said; and he wrote under the sketch, _Lydia Blood. Ship
Aroostook, August_ 15, 1874, and handed it to her, with a bow surcharged
with gravity.
She took it, and regarded the picture without comment.
“Ah!” said Staniford, “I see that you know how bad my sketch is. You
sketch.”
“No, I don't know how to draw,” replied Lydia.
“You criticise.”
“No.”
“So glad,” said Staniford. He began to like this. A young man must find
pleasure in sitting alone near a pretty young girl, and talking with her
about herself and himself, no matter how plain and dull her speech is;
and Staniford, though he found Lydia as blankly unresponsive as might be
to the flattering irony of his habit, amused himself in realizing that
here suddenly he was almost upon the terms of window-seat flirtation
with a girl whom lately he had treated with perfect indifference, and
just now with fatherly patronage. The situation had something more even
than the usual window-seat advantages; it had qualities as of a common
shipwreck, of their being cast away on a desolate island together. He
felt more than ever that he must protect this helpless loveliness, since
it had begun to please his imagination. “You don't criticise,” he said.
“Is that because you are so amiable? I'm sure you could, if you would.”
“No,” returned Lydia; “I don't really know. But I've often wished I did
know.”
“Then you didn't teach drawing, in your school?”
“How did you know I had a school?” asked Lydia quickly.
He disliked to confess his authority, because he disliked the authority,
but he said, “Mr. Hicks told us.”
“Mr. Hicks!” Lydia gave a little frown as of instinctive displeasure,
which gratified Staniford.
“Yes; the cabin-boy told him. You see, we are dreadful gossips on the
Aroostook,--though there are so few ladies--” It had slipped from him,
but it seemed to have no personal slant for Lydia.
“Oh, yes; I told Thomas,” she said. “No; it's only a country school.
Once I thought I should go down to the State Normal School, and
study drawing there; but I never did. Are you--are you a painter, Mr.
Staniford?”
He could not recollect that she had pronounced his name before; he
thought it came very winningly from her lips. “No, I'm not a painter.
I'm not anything.” He hesitated; then he added recklessly, “I'm a
farmer.”
“A farmer?” Lydia looked incredulous, but grave.
“Yes; I'm a horny-handed son of the soil. I'm a cattle-farmer; I'm a
sheep-farmer; I don't know which. One day I'm the one, and the next day
I'm the other.” Lydia looked mystified, and Staniford continued: “I
mean that I have no profession, and that sometimes I think of going into
farming, out West.”
“Yes?” said Lydia.
“How should I like it? Give me an opinion, Miss Blood.”
“Oh, I don't know,” answered the girl.
“You would never have dreamt that I was a farmer, would you?”
“No, I shouldn't,” said Lydia, honestly. “It's very hard work.”
“And I don't look fond of hard work?”
“I didn't say that.”
“And I've no right to press you for your meaning.”
“What I meant was--I mean--Perhaps if you had never tried it you didn't
know what very hard work it was. Some of the summer boarders used to
think our farmers had easy times.”
“I never was a summer boarder of that description. I know that farming
is hard work, and I'm going into it because I dislike it. What do you
think of that as a form of self-sacrifice?”
“I don't see why any one should sacrifice himself uselessly.”
“You don't? You have very little conception of martyrdom. Do you like
teaching school?”
“No,” said Lydia promptly.
“Why do you teach, then?” Staniford had blundered. He knew why she
taught, and he felt instantly that he had hurt her pride, more sensitive
than that of a more sophisticated person, who would have had no scruple
in saying that she did it because she was poor. He tried to retrieve
himself. “Of course, I understand that school-teaching is useful
self-sacrifice.” He trembled lest she should invent some pretext for
leaving him; he could not afford to be left at a disadvantage. “But do
you know, I would no more have taken you for a teacher than you me for a
farmer.”
“Yes?” said Lydia.
He could not tell whether she was appeased or not, and he rather feared
not. “You don't ask why. And I asked you why at once.”
Lydia laughed. “Well, why?”
“Oh, that's a secret. I'll tell you one of these days.” He had really no
reason; he said this to gain time. He was always honest in his talk with
men, but not always with women.
“I suppose I look very young,” said Lydia. “I used to be afraid of the
big boys.”
“If the boys were big enough,” interposed Staniford, “they must have
been afraid of you.”
Lydia said, as if she had not understood, “I had hard work to get my
certificate. But I was older than I looked.”
“That is much better,” remarked Staniford, “than being younger than
you look. I am twenty-eight, and people take me for thirty-four. I'm
a prematurely middle-aged man. I wish you would tell me, Miss Blood, a
little about South Bradfield. I've been trying to make out whether I was
ever there. I tramped nearly everywhere when I was a student. What sort
of people are they there?”
“Oh, they are very nice people,” said Lydia.
“Do you like them?”
“I never thought whether I did. They are nearly all old. Their children
have gone away; they don't seem to live; they are just staying. When I
first came there I was a little girl. One day I went into the grave-yard
and counted the stones; there were three times as many as there were
living persons in the village.”
“I think I know the kind of place,” said Staniford. “I suppose you're
not very homesick?”
“Not for the place,” answered Lydia, evasively.
“Of course,” Staniford hastened to add, “you miss your own family
circle.” To this she made no reply. It is the habit of people bred like
her to remain silent for want of some sort of formulated comment upon
remarks to which they assent.
Staniford fell into a musing mood, which was without visible
embarrassment to the young girl, who must have been inured to much
severer silences in the society of South Bradfield. He remained staring
at her throughout his reverie, which in fact related to her. He was
thinking what sort of an old maid she would have become if she had
remained in that village. He fancied elements of hardness and sharpness
in her which would have asserted themselves as the joyless years went
on, like the bony structure of her face as the softness of youth left
it. She was saved from that, whatever was to be her destiny in Italy.
From South Bradfield to Venice,--what a prodigious transition! It seemed
as if it must transfigure her. “Miss Blood,” he exclaimed, “I wish I
could be with you when you first see Venice!”
“Yes?” said Lydia.
Even the interrogative comment, with the rising inflection, could not
chill his enthusiasm. “It is really the greatest sight in the world.”
Lydia had apparently no comment to make on this fact. She waited
tranquilly a while before she said, “My father used to talk about
Italy to me when I was little. He wanted to go. My mother said
afterwards--after she had come home with me to South Bradfield--that
she always believed he would have lived if he had gone there. He had
consumption.”
“Oh!” said Staniford softly. Then he added, with the tact of his sex,
“Miss Blood, you mustn't take cold, sitting here with me. This wind is
chilly. Shall I go below and get you some more wraps?”
“No, thank you,” said Lydia; “I believe I will go down, now.”
She went below to her room, and then came out into the cabin with
some sewing at which she sat and stitched by the lamp. The captain
was writing in his log-book; Dunham and Hicks were playing checkers
together. Staniford, from a corner of a locker, looked musingly
upon this curious family circle. It was not the first time that its
occupations had struck him oddly. Sometimes when they were all there
together, Dunham read aloud. Hicks knew tricks of legerdemain which he
played cleverly. The captain told some very good stories, and led off
in the laugh. Lydia always sewed and listened. She did not seem to find
herself strangely placed, and her presence characterized all that was
said and done with a charming innocence. As a bit of life, it was as
pretty as it was quaint.
“Really,” Staniford said to Dunham, as they turned in, that night, “she
has domesticated us.”
“Yes,” assented Dunham with enthusiasm; “isn't she a nice girl?”
“She's intolerably passive. Or not passive, either. She says what she
thinks, but she doesn't seem to have thought of many things. Did she
ever tell you about her father?”
“No,” said Dunham.
“I mean about his dying of consumption?”
“No, she never spoke of him to me. Was he--”
“Um. It appears that we have been upon terms of confidence, then.”
Staniford paused, with one boot in his hand. “I should never have
thought it.”
“What was her father?” asked Dunham.
“Upon my word, I don't know. I didn't seem to get beyond elemental
statements of intimate fact with her. He died in California, where she
was born; and he always had a longing to go to Italy. That was rather
pretty.”
“It's very touching, I think.”
“Yes, of course. We might fancy this about Lurella: that she has a sort
of piety in visiting the scenes that her father wished to visit, and
that--Well, anything is predicable of a girl who says so little and
looks so much. She's certainly very handsome; and I'm bound to say that
her room could not have been better than her company, so far.”