the sports--a depressing ceremony. The performers went through their
contests, so to speak, with bated breath and a self-consciousness which,
try as we might, poisoned our applause and made it insufferably
patronising. Their backers would pluck up heart and encourage them
loudly with Whitechapel catch-words, and anon would hush their voices in
uneasy shame. Our collector, brave by fits in his dignity as steward,
would catch the eye of a saloon-deck passenger and shrink behind the
enormous rosette which some wag had pinned upon him.

Next day I made an opportunity to speak with him, after service.
It needed no pressing to extract his story, and he told it with entire
simplicity. He was a Cockney, and by trade had been a baker in
Bermondsey. "A wearing trade," he said. "The most of us die before
forty. You'd be surprised." But he had started with a sound
constitution, and somehow persuaded himself, in spite of warnings, that
he was immune. At thirty-two he had married. "A deal later than most,"
he explained--and had scarcely been married three months before lung
trouble declared itself. "I had a few pounds put by, having married so
late; and it seemed a duty to Emily to give myself every chance: so we
packed up almost at once and started for South Africa. It was a wrench
to her, but the voyage out did us both all the good in the world, she
being in a delicate state of health, and the room in Bermondsey not fit
for a woman in that condition." The baby was born in Cape Town, five
months after their landing. "But they've no employment for bakers out
there," he assured me. "We found trade very low altogether, and what I
picked up wasn't any healthier than in London. Emily disliked the
place, too; though she'd have stayed gladly if it had been doing me any
good. And so back we're going. There's one thing: I'm safe of work.
My old employer in Bermondsey has promised that all right. And the
child, you see, sir, won't suffer. There's no consumption, that I know