“Oh, no,” interrupted his lordship, “I never expect the impossible, but, you see, Captain Wilkie is rather a stickler on etiquette. He will occupy one end of the table, brave in a uniform of gold lace made by the premier naval tailor of London, so we must play up to him, my boy, and do the best we can. Then there will be our chief engineer, also in uniform, and the wireless telegraphy operator, who is rather a la-de-da young man, and lastly there’s the doctor, an Oxford graduate, and so we must do honor to the university. You and I are in the minority, and we’ll just need to make the best of it.” Mackeller departed dejectedly to his room, which he found so spacious and so luxuriously fitted up that he stood on its threshold for a few moments, dumfounded, regarding it with dismay. He emerged when the gong rang, and entered the long broad saloon which extended from side to side of the ship. Lord Stranleigh occupied the head of the table, and he introduced Mackeller to Dr. Holden, and to Mr. Spencer, electrician and telegrapher. Neither the captain nor the engineer put in an appearance during dinner, the one waiting to see his ship in more open waters, and the other standing by to watch the behavior of the machinery at the beginning of a long run. “You have a fine boat here, Stranleigh,” said the doctor. “It isn’t half bad,” admitted his lordship. “Still, there’s always a fly in the ointment. I call her _The Woman in White_, after the title of Wilkie Collins’s famous novel. You know the book, Mac-keller, I suppose?” “I never heard of it. I don’t read novels.” “Oh, well, we must convert you before the voyage is ended. You’ll find plenty of fiction on board this boat. There’s a copy of “The Woman in White” in every room, large and small, each copy in a style of binding that suits the decoration of the room, so I beg of you, Mackeller, to begin reading the story in your own apartment, and if, getting interested in it, you wish to continue in the saloon, or on deck, I hope you will take the saloon or deck copy, so that the color of the binding will not clash with your surroundings. I ought really to have the copies chained in their places, as was the case with the ancient books in our churches, for it is a terribly distressing sight to see a man reading a mauve book in a white-and-gold saloon, or a scarlet copy up on deck.” “Yes, I should think that would be appalling,” sneered Mackeller. “Now, don’t be sarcastic, Peter, and thus lacerate my tenderest artistic tastes. You may come to know, some day, when you are starving in a wilderness on the West Coast, that these are really the serious things of life.” “I dare say,” replied Peter gruffly. “Then the fly in the ointment,” said the doctor, “is the fact that your passengers persist in taking away the volumes from the rooms where they belong?”