He had at one time been a sort of man-of-all-work in a boys' school, and I think it was partly from this, and partly out of opposition to the sail-maker, that he never seemed to grudge my not having been born a poor person, or to fancy I gave myself airs (which I never did), or to take a pleasure in making me feel the roughest edge of the menial work I had to do, like so many of the men.

But he knew very well just where things did feel strangest and hardest to me, and showed that he knew it by many a bit of not unkindly chaff.
His joke about the shower-bath came very strictly true to me.

We were all on the main deck, bare-armed and bare-legged, mopping and slopping and swabbing about in the cold sea-water, which was liberally supplied to us by the steam-pump and hose.

I had been furnished with a _squeegee_ (a sort of scraper made of india-rubber at the end of broom-stick), and was putting as much "elbow-grease" into my work as renewed sea-sickness left me strength for, when the boatswain's mate turned the hose upon me once more.

I happened to be standing rather loosely, and my thoughts had flown home on the wings of a wonder what Martha would think of this way of scrubbing a floor--all wedded as the domestic mind is to hairy flannel and sticky soap and swollen knees,--when the stream of sea-water came in full force against my neck, and I and my squeegee went head-over-heels into the lee scuppers.