She would have made a nice, helpful, motherly body if she'd married the curate." As we neared Bombay, conversation grew gradually more and more Indian; it always does under similar circumstances.

A sea voyage is half retrospect, half prospect; it has no personal identity.

You leave Liverpool for New York at the English standpoint, and are full of what you did in London or Manchester; half-way over, you begin to discuss American custom-houses and New York hotels; by the time you reach Sandy Hook, the talk is all of quick trains west and the shortest route from Philadelphia to New Orleans.

You grow by slow stages into the new attitude; at Malta you are still regretting Europe; after Aden, your mind dwells most on the hire of punkah-wallahs and the proverbial toughness of the dak-bungalow chicken.
"How's the plague at Bombay now ?" an inquisitive passenger inquired of the Captain at dinner our last night out.

"Getting any better ?" Lady Meadowcroft's thumb dived between her fingers again.