How extraordinary! Please call her over here. I must have a good look at her. Steward! Some nuts.”

And Emily was summoned to make her curtsey before this proud wife, and to listen to the bland and patronizing comments made upon her appearance and manners.

At once the news spread like wildfire round the promenade deck. Cries of “Good heavens!” and “Oh, Mamma, ain’t she cute! Won’t you buy her for me, Mamma?” were heard on every side, and soon the embarrassed chimp stood nervously in the middle of a ring of grinning faces.

It says much for her native good humor, and for the training she had received from her protector, that she lost neither her temper nor her outward self-possession, but, making a stately inclination or two in acknowledgment of the attention bestowed on her, she gently pressed her way through the crowd and sought the quiet sanctuary of the stateroom.

“You must not mind her shyness,” explained Mr. Fatigay courteously. “She is very unused to the society of a large circle of white people.”

“Bring her out. Go on, man! Bring her out,” shouted the young subalterns and planters, going home on leave. “Will she smoke a cigarette?”

For the two or three days following this Emily’s life was little better than a torment, for no sooner did she venture on deck to take a breath of fresh air than she was surrounded by an inquisitive crowd, to whom the least and most ordinary of her actions was a source of loud amazement. When, in the hope of turning aside the derision, and even of enlisting the friendship of two or three of them, who appeared more intelligent than the rest, she ventured to nod approval of some remark they made, or handed them, for example, the Conrad she had secured for herself, with one finger marking a fine descriptive passage, while, with the other hand, she indicated the appropriate sea around them, they would merely burst out into crueler laughter than before.

“Ah!” thought the chimp, “though it is bad enough to be mocked on account of unfashionable clothes and perhaps superfluous hair, these are, after all, admittedly defects. But why should they laugh at me for my understanding? Perhaps they think it ridiculous for one of my sex to aspire to culture. It would be different if I were a tom.”

With this, she drew into her shell a little, and, as there was little entertainment in the sight of even a chimp sitting hour after hour staring at a book, the fickle interest of the voyagers soon slackened and was diverted. A seaman was discovered to be a woman masquerading in man’s clothes. An actress’s pearls were declared missing. A fancy-dress ball was organized, and in the general excitement the chimp soon ceased to be an object of remark.

“We must go to the ball,” said Mr. Fatigay, and Emily’s heart bounded with joy. After all, she was young and spirited; nor could she, any more than the rest of her sex, resist the peculiar thrill of the prospect of appearing in the most bewitchingly suitable costume, and among an admiring crowd.

“Perhaps I might go as Carmen,” she thought. “If only I could beg a Spanish shawl from someone, and a red rose to hold in my lips.” And she looked anxiously to where Mr. Fatigay was eating a dish of Irish stew, to see if there were any bones in it which might serve as castanets.

“To-re-a-dor!” The quickening strains stirred in her mind, making her blood tingle as if they had been struck up to hail her entrance into the ballroom.

“The question is,” said Mr. Fatigay, “what shall one go as?”

“Or perhaps Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat.” True, it was, strictly speaking, a part for a blonde, but, after all, there were tiger lilies. And a white sheet, pinned here and there, would do for the basic part of the costume. “And I might carry his rowing shield,” she thought, “and be polishing it! In a way, it wouldn’t suit me as well as Carmen, but supposing he realized that he is my Sir Lancelot, and she his hard exacting Guinevere!”

“Of course, I make a very good pirate,” murmured her protector.

“Or supposing I went as Ruth,” she thought, “dipping my morsel in the vinegar. A smile or two, bestowed generally, would reassure the company that no slight was intended . . .”

“By Jove! I’ve got it,” suddenly cried Mr. Fatigay, slapping his thigh with a crack like a pistol shot. “Where’s that green velvet smoking jacket mother sent me? It’ll be just the thing. I’ll go as an organ-grinder, and I’ll get the stewardess to run up a little suit for Emily, out of some red stuff, and she can be the monkey. Perhaps we’ll get the prize.”

Emily gazed at him in consternation. Her first fancy-dress ball! Why should he demean himself by appearing as a paltry mountebank, and how could he force her to appear in the most humiliating of all possible roles? A hot tide of anger and rebellion surged up in her heart, and she, even Emily, raised her foot to stamp in ungovernable rage.

Yet even in the very act she hesitated, and, struck by a new thought, she remained in that stork-like posture, while she considered the matter more seriously.

“After all,” she said to herself, “Mr. Fatigay is a man, and no doubt he knows best.