Page:Romance & Reality 3.pdf/271

Rh companion to the cabin—at the same time collecting her best English to explain that Miss Arundel was too ill for conversation. "All affectation," said Mr. Robert, who still resented her silence in the chapel. Two, however, of the passengers in the vessel were very agreeably employed—they were making love. By-the-by, what an ugly phrase "making love" is—as if love were a dress or a pudding. Signor Giulio's fortunate star was in the ascendant. Miss Amelia Bridget Higgs was not, it is true, the beauty of the family; she was therefore the more grateful for any little polite attentions. And—to tell in a few words what took them a great many—Mr. Higgs, who had come to Marseilles to meet his family, landed his feminine stock with warm congratulations that they had not taken up with any frog-eating fellow abroad. The old Greek proverb says, "Call no man happy till he dies." A week after their arrival in Fitzroy Square, Miss Amelia Bridget thought it good for her health to walk every morning before breakfast. "A very fine thing," observed Mrs. Higgs; "I am sure it used to be Job's own job to get her out of her bed."