It was the most unexpected and delightful thing to be packed into one’s chair next morning by Dacres Tottenham. As I emerged from the music saloon after breakfast--Cecily had stayed below to look over her hymns and consider with her bishop the possibility of an anthem--Dacres’s face was the first I saw; it simply illuminated, for me, that portion of the deck. I noticed with pleasure the quick toss of the cigar overboard as he recognized and bore down upon me. We were immense friends; John liked him too. He was one of those people who make a tremendous difference; in all our three hundred passengers there could be no one like him, certainly no one whom I could be more glad to see. We plunged at once into immediate personal affairs, we would get at the heart of them later. He gave his vivid word to everything he had seen and done; we laughed and exclaimed and were silent in a concert of admirable understanding. We were still unravelling, still demanding and explaining when the ship’s bell began to ring for church, and almost simultaneously Cecily advanced towards us. She had a proper Sunday hat on, with flowers under the brim, and a church-going frock; she wore gloves and clasped a prayer-book. Most of the women who filed past to the summons of the bell were going down as they were, in cotton blouses and serge skirts, in tweed caps or anything, as to a kind of family prayers. I knew exactly how they would lean against the pillars of the saloon during the psalms. This young lady would be little less than a rebuke to them. I surveyed her approach; she positively walked as if it were Sunday. ‘My dear,’ I said, ‘how endimanchee you look! The bishop will be very pleased with you. This gentleman is Mr. Tottenham, who administers Her Majesty’s pleasure in parts of India about Allahabad. My daughter, Dacres.’ She was certainly looking very fresh, and her calm grey eyes had the repose in them that has never known itself to be disturbed about anything. I wondered whether she bowed so distantly also because it was Sunday, and then I remembered that Dacres was a young man, and that the Farnham ladies had probably taught her that it was right to be very distant with young men. ‘It is almost eleven, mamma.’ ‘Yes, dear. I see you are going to church.’ ‘Are you not coming, mamma?’ I was well wrapped up in an extremely comfortable corner. I had ‘La Duchesse Bleue’ uncut in my lap, and an agreeable person to talk to. I fear that in any case I should not been inclined to attend the service, but there was something in my daughter’s intonation that made me distinctly hostile to the idea. I am putting things down as they were, extenuating nothing. ‘I think not, dear.’ ‘I’ve turned up two such nice seats.’ ‘Stay, Miss Farnham, and keep us in countenance,’ said Dacres, with his charming smile. The smile displaced a look of discreet and amused observation. Dacres had an eye always for a situation, and this one was even newer to him than to me.