Having settled this point to the perfect satisfaction of all
parties, concerned and unconcerned, we sat down round the fire in
the ladies' cabin - just to try the effect. It was rather dark,
certainly; but somebody said, 'of course it would be light, at
sea,' a proposition to which we all assented; echoing 'of course,
of course;' though it would be exceedingly difficult to say why we
thought so. I remember, too, when we had discovered and exhausted
another topic of consolation in the circumstance of this ladies'
cabin adjoining our state-room, and the consequently immense
feasibility of sitting there at all times and seasons, and had
fallen into a momentary silence, leaning our faces on our hands and
looking at the fire, one of our party said, with the solemn air of
a man who had made a discovery, 'What a relish mulled claret will
have down here!' which appeared to strike us all most forcibly; as
though there were something spicy and high-flavoured in cabins,
which essentially improved that composition, and rendered it quite
incapable of perfection anywhere else.
There was a stewardess, too, actively engaged in producing clean
sheets and table-cloths from the very entrails of the sofas, and
from unexpected lockers, of such artful mechanism, that it made
one's head ache to see them opened one after another, and rendered
it quite a distracting circumstance to follow her proceedings, and
to find that every nook and corner and individual piece of
furniture was something else besides what it pretended to be, and
was a mere trap and deception and place of secret stowage, whose
ostensible purpose was its least useful one.
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