As to _her_, she spent much of her time in sewing and in attempting to master the English tongue out of some books which I borrowed from Greaves’s cabin, and with such help as I had time to give her. We had plenty of needles and thread on board. Greaves, before his illness grew, had given Miss Aurora a handsome roll of pure white duck, or drill--I forget now which it was--to do what she pleased with. I had found some remnants of bunting, of different colors, that she might amuse herself, if she chose, with Greaves’s notion of trimming her dresses; then I had borrowed a thimble from the forecastle. You will suppose that it was not a _tight_ fit; but she managed with it. And so she went to work, sewing in the cabin or in her own berth; and I see her now, with my mind’s eye, as she sits under the skylight, stitching away like any seamstress earning a living, the jewels upon her fingers flashing as her hand rises and falls. One morning she came out of her berth dressed in a gown of her own manufacture. It was built on original lines, and it suited her. I believe she had shaped it to enable her to get about with ease, to allow her to step without inconvenience up the companion ladder and through the hatch, to pass through the cabin betwixt the table and the lockers without being dragged, and sometimes held, by the folds of her skirt, and to freely move in her little bedroom. The dress she had been cast away in had hardly permitted this liberty. It was voluminous enough to have yielded her three clinging skirts; it caught the wind when she was on deck, and blew out like a topsail in a squall when the yard is on the cap. I admired her vastly in this costume of her own making. The cut answered something to my own taste in female apparel; the waist rose high, the sleeves were tight, the dip and swell of her shape were defined. I had always suspected that a nobly proportioned woman lay awkwardly hid in the dress that had heretofore clothed her, and I guessed I had been right when I looked at her this morning and marked the curve of the breast, the width of the shoulders, the fine, swinging, lofty carriage. The dress was snow white; it fell in with the color of her face. Her cheeks seemed the whiter for the whiteness of her clothes. She had trimmed her dress with triple lines of red bunting, and, for my part, I should never want to see a prettier or more effective gown on a maiden for sea use. She stood in the door of her berth, looking archly at me. Galloon growled, scarce knowing her for the moment. Greaves was in his berth, for by this time he was ailing badly. She looked down her dress, colored slightly, then walked up to me and said: “How you like it? How you like it?” turning herself about a little coquettishly.