Similes apart, however, the _Caribbeania_ was now so steady that an infant could have danced a jig upon her deck. Several infants tried. Amusements rushed upon her passengers from every side. A week passed like a wink. Hardly were you awake in the morning before you found yourself pursuing an egg round your own ankles with a teaspoon. Sports and rumours of sports followed you even unto your nightly bunk. Everybody developed talents hitherto successfully concealed in napkins. Courtesy found her life’s vocation in dropping potatoes into buckets. She brought this homely pursuit to a very subtle art, and felt that she had not lived in vain. Not that she ever suffered from morbid illusions as to her value. The gardener brought to light a latent gift for sitting astride upon a spar while other men tried with bolsters to remove him. The suffragette, when nobody was looking, acquired proficiency in the art of shuffling the board. When observed, she instinctively donned an appearance of contempt. Mrs. Paul Rust settled herself immovably in a chair and applauded solo at the moments when others were not applauding. The priest, looking in an opposite direction, clapped when he heard other hands being clapped, in order to show the kind interest he took in mundane affairs. While occupied thus, one day, he found himself next to Courtesy. That determined lady had her back to a Whisky and Soda Race then in progress, and looked aggrieved. She had been beaten in the first heat, whereas she was convinced that victory had been her due. Courtesy suffered from all the faults that you and I—poetic souls—cannot love. She was greedy. She was fat. She could not even lose a race without suspecting the timekeeper of corruption. All the same, there was something so entirely healthy and human about her, that nobody had ever pointed out to her her lack of poetry, and of the more subtle virtues. The priest, who had also never been able to lose a game without losing his temper too, sympathised with Courtesy, and employed laborious tact in trying to lead her thoughts elsewhere. “Trinity Islands are your destination, are they not, yerce, yerce?” he said. “Yes,” replied Courtesy. “And I wish this old tub would buck up and get there.” “You have reasons of your own for being very anxious to arrive?” suggested the priest archly. “Nothing special that I know of,” answered Courtesy. “I’m only an ordinary globe-trotter.” Frankly, she was being sent out to get married. But this, of course, was among the things that are not said. Her father had become tired of supporting a daughter as determined to study art in London as she was incapable of succeeding at it. He had accepted for her a casual invitation from a cousin for a season in the Trinity Islands. The invitation was so very casual that Courtesy had appreciated the whole scheme as a matrimonial straw clutched at by an over-daughtered parent. But her feelings were not hurt. She had bluff, tough feelings.