You'd best step on board: the ladder's on t'other side." As we passed under the vessel's stern I looked up and read her name-- _Glad Tidings, Port of Fowey_.
"I've a-broken it to her," our host announced, meeting us at the top of the ladder.

"She says you're to come down." Down the companion we followed him accordingly and so into a small cabin occupied--or, let me rather say, filled--by the stoutest woman it has ever been my lot to meet.

She reclined--in such a position as to display a pair of colossal feet, shoeless, clothed in thick worsted stockings--upon a locker on the starboard side: and no one, regarding her, could wonder that this also was the side towards which the vessel listed.

Her broad recumbent back was supported by a pile of seamen's bags, almost as plethoric as herself and containing (if one might judge from a number of miscellaneous articles protruding from their distended mouths) her bridal outfit.
Unprepared as she was for a second visitor in the form of a small chimney-sweep, she betrayed no astonishment; but after receiving her brother's kiss on either cheek bent a composed gaze on me, and so eyed me for perhaps half a minute.

Her features were not uncomely.
"O.P.," she addressed her husband.