They have a sufficiency of garments, but some of them were gifts
dropped into the boat--Lady Mary's tarpaulin coat and hat, for
instance, and Catherine's blue jersey and red cap, which certify
that the two ladies were lately before the mast. Agatha is too gay
in Ernest's dressing-gown, and clutches it to her person with both
hands as if afraid that it may be claimed by its rightful owner.
There are two pairs of bath slippers between the three of them, and
their hair cries aloud and in vain for hairpins.
By their side, on an inverted bucket, sits Ernest, clothed neatly in
the garments of day and night, but, alas, bare-footed. He is the
only cheerful member of this company of four, but his brightness is
due less to a manly desire to succour the helpless than to his
having been lately in the throes of composition, and to his modest
satisfaction with the result. He reads to the ladies, and they
listen, each with one scared eye to the things that fall from trees.
ERNEST (who has written on the fly-leaf of the only book saved from
the wreck).
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