“I am not going in, my dear,” she said as she entered the cabin. “I only stepped round to see that you were all right this morning. I knew you would be so, though Robinson the steward tells me that even the little sea there is on in the bay has been quite sufficient to make about a dozen vacancies at the breakfast-table. People are such fools when they come aboard a ship--eating boiled paste and all sorts of things, and so the sea is grossly misrepresented. Did that dreadfully healthy Mr. Thompson awake you with his tramping on deck? Of course he did; he's a dreadful man. If he goes on like this we'll have to petition the captain to lay down bark on the deck. Now I'll leave you. Come aloft when you are ready; and, by the way, you must take care what dress you put on--very great care.” “Why, I thought that aboard ship one might wear anything,” said the girl. “Never was there a greater mistake, my child. People say the same about going to the seaside: anything will do; but you know how one requires to be doubly particular there; and it's just the same in our little world aboard ship.” “You quite frighten me, Mrs. Crawford,” said Daireen. “What advice can you give me on the subject?” Mrs. Crawford was thoughtful. “If you had only had time to prepare for the voyage, and I had been beside you, everything might have been different. You must not wear anything pronounced--any distinct colour: you must find out something undecided--you understand?” Daireen looked puzzled. “I'm sorry to say I don't.” “Oh, you have surely something of pale sage--no, that is a bad tone for the first days aboard--too like the complexions of most of the passengers--but, chocolate-gray? ah, that should do: have you anything in that to do for a morning dress?” Daireen was so extremely fortunate as to be possessed of a garment of the required tone, and her kind friend left her arraying herself in its folds. On going aloft Daireen found the deck occupied by a select few of the passengers. The healthy gentleman was just increasing his pace for the final hundred yards of his morning's walk, and Doctor Campion had got very near the end of his second cheroot, while he sat talking to a fair-haired and bronze-visaged man with clear gray eyes that had such a way of looking at things as caused people to fancy he was making a mental calculation of the cubic measure of everything; and it was probably the recollection of their peculiarity that made people fancy, when these eyes looked into a human face, that the mind of the man was going through a similar calculation with reference to the human object: one could not avoid feeling that he had a number of formulas for calculating the intellectual value of people, and that when he looked at a person he was thinking which formula should be employed for arriving at a conclusion regarding that person's mental capacity. Mrs. Crawford was chatting with the doctor and his companion, but on Daireen's appearing, she went over to her.