unsympathetic eyes of the stern steerage-stewardess, an early victim
of seasickness.

"Hi, w'ere's yer ticket?" that fierce female cried, and M'riar showed
it to her, weakly, scarcely caring whether it entitled her to passage
or condemned her to expulsion from the ship by a sharp toss overside.

"Garn in there," said the stewardess, studying the ticket and its
bearer's symptoms simultaneously. "S'y, yer goin' ter be a nice sweet
passenger to 'ave hon board, now 'yn't yer?"

"Hi'm goin' ter die," said M'riar with firm conviction and not at all
appalled but rather pleased at thought of it.

"No such luck fer hus!" the stewardess replied. "Get _in_ there,
cawn't yer, before hit comes quite hon?"

So M'riar, long before the ship began to definitely feel even the
gentle Channel sea, was thrust into retirement, willy, nilly, and
immediately sought a bunk, absolutely without interest in anything,
even in her own sad fate. All she wished to do was die, at once, and
she had too little energy even to wish that very vividly. Miss Anna,
Herr Kreutzer and the fine young man who had been kind to them, who,
ten minutes earlier, had all been real and potent interests, dimmed
into hazy phantoms of a bygone activity of mind.

"Oh,--ar-r-r-r-r-r!" M'riar groaned. "Th' bloomink ship is standin' on
'er bloody 'ead, yn't 'er?"

"Garn! Keep yer 'ead _flat_. Lay _down_," the stewardess replied, "er