QUITE ALONE.

BOOK THE FIRST: CHILDHOOD.

CHAPTER XXIII. LILY IS IN A STRANGE
COUNTRY.

IT was three o'clock on the following morning
before the steam-packet Harlequin entered the
harbour of Boulogne. Lily had had a fearful
time of it. She was very comfortable, and almost
happy during the passage of the vessel down the
river; for the weather was fine, the water was
smooth, and her protectress, betaking herself to
the perusal of sundry volumes bound in yellow
paper, left her at peace. Then, a gentleman in a
braided surtout, with very large whiskers and
moustache, a cap with a gold band to it, and
who continually smoked a pipe with a very richly-
coloured brown bowl, a silver top, and a green
tassel depending from it, and who wore,
besides, a leathern bag slung by a strap over his
shoulder, was very kind to her, and showed her
a variety of interesting objects on both banks of
the river. He was a most good-humoured gentleman,
but his English was, to Lily, well-nigh
incomprehensible.

"Did you ligue joggolate?" he asked, in a
hoarse voice, and a grin that sent his black
whiskers very far apart indeed. "Joggolate is
good for de liddle kinder. Yez, it is moldo
grazioso. Denez, ma bedide, here is some
joggolate."

He produced from the leathern bag, as he
spoke, a stick of chocolate wrapped in some
neat tinfoil. This covering he partially stripped
off, broke off a piece of the sweetmeat, and
popped it, with a jovial grin, between Lily's
lips. The child had never tasted chocolate
before. Then he began to fill his pipe from a pouch
likewise produced from the leathern bag, and as
he shut the latter, Lily seemed to hear the
chinking of money.

"Mein good little friend, ma bonne amie, gif
me de bouch," he continued. "It is moldo
grazioso. She gif thems to me, begause I lof
her. I lof de bipes and de tobacko. De bipes is
not good for de liddle kinder. He make
romfozzle in der stomjacks zo."

Then, from a pocket in his braided surtout, he
took a little case-bottle, unscrewed the top, and
applied it to his lips.

"De brandies is goods," he remarked, throwing
his head back. "De brandies is goods for de
mal de mer. By-and-by your mamma, when de
sea shall romfozzle your stomjacks, shall give
you some brandies in your tea. A ver liddle,
zo. Vill you ave some more joggolate?"

But here the lady looked up from the French
novel she was reading, and angrily bade the
child come and sit beside her. "You are not
to associate with servants and low people. Que
font ces gens-là dans cette partie du vaisseau?"

Lily thought that if the braided and whiskered
gentleman was a servant, he was a very handsome
and a very good-natured one. He walked away,
grumbling.

"Diavolo!" he murmured. " Quelle mégère.
She needn'ts be so tarn proud for what I am a
gourier. Franz Stimm il vaut bien cette sauteuse
sour les zevaux."

It would be, perhaps, more correct, as the
braided gentleman was talking to himself, to
inscribe, in their native tongue, the thoughts to
which he gave utterance, but the gentleman
hadn't any native tongue or native country
either, to speak of; Franz Stimm was a courier,
and knew all tongues, and all countries—a little.

By degrees the lady became absorbed again
in the study of her French novels, and Lily
stole softly away from her side, and went and
sat on the little raised part of the deck above
the rudder chains, and studied the weather-
beaten man in the pea-jacket who was at the
helm. By-and-by, being totally ignorant of the
printed injunction of prohibition, she had the
audacity to speak to the man at the wheel; and
the man himself—it being a quiet afternoon, and
the captain being in his cabin refreshing himself
with his after-dinner grog—spoke to her. No
great harm resulted from this contravention of
maritime discipline. He told her all about the
Dreadnought, and the windmills on the Essex
shore, and the great guns at Woolwich Arsenal;
also, that a many had been hung at Execution
Dock, and that when he was a lad in war-time,
he had been pressed and kept four days and
nights aboard the guardship at the Nore, not-
withstanding his being a 'prentice, and having a
'stifficate from Waterman's Hall in his pocket.

But this confiding mariner was in time removed,
and the hairy man in the striped guernsey who
succeeded him was not so communicative. He