SECOND SCENE.

The Store-Room.

Persons possessed of sluggish livers and tender hearts find two serious
drawbacks to the enjoyment of a cruise at sea. It is exceedingly
difficult to get enough walking exercise; and it is next to impossible
(where secrecy is an object) to make love without being found out.
Reverting for the moment to the latter difficulty only, life within the
narrow and populous limits of a vessel may be defined as essentially
life in public. From morning to night you are in your neighbor's way, or
your neighbor is in your way. As a necessary result of these conditions,
the rarest of existing men may be defined as the man who is capable
of stealing a kiss at sea without discovery. An inbred capacity for
stratagem of the finest sort; inexhaustible inventive resources;
patience which can flourish under superhuman trials; presence of mind
which can keep its balance victoriously under every possible stress of
emergency--these are some of the qualifications which must accompany
Love on a cruise, when Love embarks in the character of a contraband
commodity not duly entered on the papers of the ship.

Having established a Code of Signals which enabled them to communicate
privately, while the eyes and ears of others were wide open on every
side of them, Natalie and Launce were next confronted by the more
serious difficulty of finding a means of meeting together at stolen
interviews on board the yacht. Possessing none of those precious
moral qualifications already enumerated as the qualifications of an
accomplished lover at sea, Launce had proved unequal to grapple with the
obstacles in his way. Left to her own inventive resources, Natalie
had first suggested the young surgeon's medical studies as Launce's