Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/106

 with shame and indignation. It would be better to perish as a martyr—better certainly to voyage to Glasgow without a hat—than to return to a home darkened with the shadow of an unquenchable joke.

She did not emerge from her hiding-place until the steamer started.

She found the girls and men, for whose sake she had attempted the adventure, assembled in the waist of the ship. Under the fore-deck were piled packing-cases and great bales of wool. In the shelter of the after-deck were the bullocks—creatures fortunate in having owners who could sue the company if harm came of exposure during the voyage. Between the wool and the bullocks on the open deck were the harvesters. Some sat chatting, with their backs against the bulwarks. Another group was gathered round a foreseeing boy who had brought a melodeon, and prepared to dance. Others had opened their bundles, and spread food on the deck in front of them. It was uninviting enough—lumps of yellow cake made in the cabin pot-ovens from strong flour; thick soft biscuits, with currants dotted here and there in them; and a few oranges; but the sight of it reminded Mrs. Crossley that she had started before luncheon, and that the steamer took twenty hours to reach Glasgow. Apart from the others stood two girls, who looked wistfully back to the hills they were leaving, and sang softly a plaintive song in Irish. Mrs. Crossley felt that these would be admirable subjects for her