Cynthia, pinning the wig into a better fit, murmured a vague assent. But she didn’t feel at all thrilled. After eight days the ship was like another home in which she knew, by sight at least, almost every occupant. Paris was going to be new and strange. Oh yes, a grand new adventure, but sometimes she got scared at the thought of it. So big, with all the street signs and the menus in a different language and so much that was new to learn. What if she failed to make good on the job that had brought her over, the dozen covers for _Little Ones’ Magazine_? Suppose she didn’t have the money to stay? Suppose she couldn’t make people understand her French, even though Stasia had been coaching her all week? Oh shut up, Cynthia! “Miss Mitchall’s the old girl I admire,” she said suddenly. “She’s got more courage! You know she’s returning practically without a job and without money and she’s fifty if she’s a day, though she looks sixty, poor darling. I don’t believe she’s got ten dollars beyond her fare to London.” “What was she doing in the States?” asked Stasia. Stasia hadn’t, Cynthia thought, much imagination, but perhaps that was because her father was president of the line. Look at this suite de luxe, the best in the ship. And if she had never earned her own living she couldn’t imagine what it was to be like Miss Mitchall. “Oh, she had some sort of a governess job. But she’s English you know, and she didn’t come in on the quota and so she had to go back home. She was with a Canadian family in Buffalo. They are paying her fare back, but that’s all. I wish ...” she stopped. She was going to say she wished she could help her. Stasia looked at her watch, the little platinum watch circled with diamonds. “It’s six my dear, and dinner’s at half past seven. If you’re going to get your roommate into her costume ...” “You’re right, you’re perfectly right.” Cynthia struggled into her wool dress, grabbed the black scarf, the buckled shoes, threw the blouse over her arm. “Here, give me a hand with the other stuff, will you? I’ll take the hat.” Cynthia’s small cabin was down, down, two steep flights below the cabins de luxe. Clean white corridors smelling of soap and sea and ship, doors shut and white, doors open and dark, doors open and lighted, a narrow corridor turning down to the left, two doors facing each other, the left one always closed. Cynthia often wondered about that door. She knew the cabin was occupied because the room steward went in and out but no one else ever did. The door to the right was Cynthia’s and Miss Mitchall’s. “Here we are. Thanks a lot. Can I help with make-up or anything?” Cynthia dumped her things on the bunk, turned on the lights. “No, thanks. The stewardess and Lilia will help if I want it.” Lilia was Stasia’s maid. Cynthia smiled. Think of having a maid to yourself!