"She is bound to find something to do," answered Hardy. "The colonies are yearning for young English ladies." "Young English domestics, you mean," said Captain Smedley. "What is the good of ladies? What is the good of gentlemen in lands where labour, and labour only, is wanted?" "Why would not you go out as an emigrant, Miss Armstrong?" said Mrs. Smedley. "Of course," she added, "I presume you have Australia in your mind?" "I would go out as anything as long as I could get out," answered Julia. "Take my advice and don't talk of emigration," said Captain Smedley. "You will be miserably fed and miserably berthed. You will have a matron and a surgeon over you, and the discipline will make you wish yourself overboard. Your associates will be mean and dirty wretches, who would have qualified for transportation could they have made sure of the sentence. Your ship will be ill-found. They talk of the emigrants marrying on their arrival. Yes, but what is a young lady like you going to say to such suitors as offer? You wouldn't like to marry a convict? You wouldn't like to settle down with a hairdresser in a back street? Don't you go out in an emigrant ship, Miss Armstrong." "It is all very fine talking about _don't_," said Hardy, "but what we want is _do_. Miss Armstrong wishes to leave England for good. She pockets her pride, and is willing to work. She has no money, and I must secure her a berth somehow before I sail, because I am not going to leave her alone in London, where she's friendless; and friendlessness in London where all is opulence and misery, like the front and the back of the moon--one shining, one ice-cold as death, and black--is heart-breaking, and for many, Smedley, the invitation of the dark waters of the Thames has been welcome." "My God! you're just the same--always sky high," said Smedley; and he drank some champagne out of the bottle he had ordered. "When you were a midshipman under me you were talking like that, and you're talking it still." "Surely a man can put his hand in the tar-bucket without blacking his whole body," said Hardy, looking at Mrs. Smedley, whose face was in sympathy with his speech. "When I'm ashore I talk like a gentleman. One can't be always cussing and swearing; and oh! says you"--and his fine, dark keen eyes showed there was laughter in him--"Give me Jack Muck, nothing short of Jack Muck. Hitch up, turn your quid, pull your greasy forelock, mind that you're boozed. Oh, Lord! Smedley, ha'n't you had enough of it?" "Miss Armstrong," said Smedley, rolling his eyes slowly from Hardy to the girl, "why do you want to go to Australia? Why don't you go to India?" "India," muttered Hardy, "what's she going to do in India?" "No, but I tell you what," said Smedley, with emphasis, "such a young lady as that may do before she gets out there." Julia gazed at him inquiringly, and Mrs. Smedley turned her head to watch his face.