she was going to Europe for the education of her children. I had already
perceived--an hour after we left the dock--that some energetic measure
was required in their interest, but as we were not in Europe yet the
redemption of the four little Pecks was stayed. Enjoying untrammelled
leisure they swarmed about the ship as if they had been pirates boarding
her, and their mother was as powerless to check their licence as if she
had been gagged and stowed away in the hold. They were especially to be
trusted to dive between the legs of the stewards when these attendants
arrived with bowls of soup for the languid ladies. Their mother was too
busy counting over to her fellow-passengers all the years Miss Mavis had
been engaged. In the blank of our common detachment things that were
nobody's business very soon became everybody's, and this was just one of
those facts that are propagated with mysterious and ridiculous speed. The
whisper that carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of
air and space and progress, but it's also very safe, for there's no
compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. And then
repetition at sea is somehow not repetition; monotony is in the air, the
mind is flat and everything recurs--the bells, the meals, the stewards'
faces, the romp of children, the walk, the clothes, the very shoes and
buttons of passengers taking their exercise. These things finally grow
at once so circumstantial and so arid that, in comparison, lights on the
personal history of one's companions become a substitute for the friendly
flicker of the lost fireside.

Jasper Nettlepoint sat on my left hand when he was not upstairs seeing
that Miss Mavis had her repast comfortably on deck. His mother's place
would have been next mine had she shown herself, and then that of the
young lady under her care. These companions, in other words, would have
been between us, Jasper marking the limit of the party in that quarter.
Miss Mavis was present at luncheon the first day, but dinner passed