I was just going to meet him and tell him how nice he looked, when one of the lady passengers who had been coming on board, and whom I had been manoeuvring to avoid, cut across my bows, so to speak, and rushed at him like a whirlwind. I really thought the woman was going to throw her arms round his neck. "Oh, Captain Braye!" she exclaimed loudly, "how too, too charming to see you here again. Have you come back to the Bendigo for good? Oh, how I hope you have! Do you know, I was going to Sydney by the mail, and was actually on my way to the P.&O. office, when somebody told me you were taking Captain Watson's place. I said at once, 'Then no mail steamers for me, thank you. No other captain for me if I can get Captain Braye.' And so here I am. I managed to get packed up in a day and a half." I could see that Tom looked quite confused. We had both hoped so much that the people would all be strangers who would leave us alone, and he guessed the annoyance I should feel at the threatened curtailment of our independence by this forward person. But there was no need for him to inveigle her out of earshot, and there stand and talk to her for ever so long, as if there were secrets between them not for me to overhear. I know what she wanted--I heard her ask for it--whether she could have the deck cabin as before! A very few seconds should have sufficed to answer _that_ question. She was a stylish person in her way, and her clothes were good, and the servants paid court to her; I asked one of them who she was, and he said the "lady" of a merchant of some standing in Melbourne--just the class of passenger we were most anxious to be without. When their confabulation was at an end Tom brought her to the bench where I was sitting and introduced her to me. "My wife, Mrs. Harris--Mrs. Harris, dear--who has sailed with me before." "Often," said Mrs. Harris, extending a bejewelled hand. "We are very old friends, the captain and I." "Indeed?" I said, bowing. He had never mentioned her name to me. But, as he explained when I told him so, he couldn't be expected to remember the names of the thousands of strangers he carried in the course of the year. I reminded him that she considered herself not a stranger, but a friend; and he said, with a laugh, "Oh, they all do that."