The suffragette sat down upon an isolated chair. “May I have a dance?” asked the gardener of Courtesy. “I can’t dart or stagger, only revolve.” “I was sea-sick only three hours ago,” retorted Courtesy with simplicity. “But I have a lot to talk to you about, so you can have number one. And we’ll begin it now.” But the orchestra was still idling in the melancholy manner peculiar to orchestras. Why—by the way—is there something so unutterably sad in the expression of an orchestra about to play a jovial onestep? “I do want to know about your marriage,” pursued Courtesy, whose curiosity was a daylight trait, like the rest of her characteristics. “When did it happen, and where did you meet her, and why did you have a wedding without me to help?” “I met her—on the way to Paradise,” said the gardener, posing luxuriously as an enigma. “We got married on the way too. It was a no-flowers-by-request sort of wedding, otherwise we would have invited you.” “But I can’t understand it,” said Courtesy. “Only a week ago you were snivelling over a broken boot-lace.” The gardener’s pose had a fall. He might have expected that Courtesy would trip it up. The violins, relieving their feelings by a preliminary concerted yell, settled down to a lamentation in ragtime. The gardener danced rather well, as his mother had taught him to dance. Courtesy danced rather well, after the manner of The Generation. But the _Caribbeania_ danced better than either. She reduced them to planting their four feet wide and sliding up and down. The ship’s officers, with their lucky partners, leaning to the undulations of the deck, like willows bending to the wind, showed to immense advantage. They evidently knew every wave of the Atlantic by heart. But among the remaining dancers there was much unrest. Captain Walters, who was accustomed to be one of the principal ornaments of a more stationary ballroom, at once knocked his partner down and sat upon her. Theresa and a subaltern slid helplessly at the mercy of the elements into a forest of chaperons. The gardener and Courtesy leaned together and clung, with a tense look on their faces. I dare not say what angle the deck had reached when the orchestra, with an unpremeditated lapse into a Futurist style of melody, broke loose, and glided in a heaving phalanx to join the turmoil. The piano, being lashed to its post, remained a triumphant survivor, calmly surveying the fallen estate of the less stable instruments. “I am not enjoying myself a bit,” said Courtesy, as she disentangled a violin from her hair, and strove to dislodge the ’celloist from his position on her lap. The gardener disliked agreeing with any one, but he seemed by no means anxious to continue dancing. The orchestra also seemed a little loth to risk its dignity again at once, and even Theresa, though still plastered with a pink smile, was retiring on the arm of her subaltern to a twilit deck-chair.