Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/52

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42
AN AMERICAN GIRL IN INDIA

no good at the polite and gentle art of pushing. She ought to go and get practice at the autumn sales in town. She loves a bargain, so perhaps that might make her keen. But I guess her only real hope is to get a husband to push for her, though from the note I've taken of them, husbands are not much use in that line. Any woman if she tries can push past any man any day.

That Dover-Calais boat I don't just remember with a gleam of pleasure. I admit I felt downright ill before we had fairly got under weigh. I left Marjory, green and crumpled up in a deckchair, with Lady Manifold marching up and down in front of her exhorting her to do the same. Lady Manifold is one of those objectionable people—a good sailor. I don't think there is any callousness quite equal to the callousness of the good sailor towards the bad. Lady Manifold, marching up and down, the picture of robust and perfect health, looked positively obnoxious. She even turned to me with offensive cheeriness and asked me to walk up and down too. Now the boat had not begun to roll much as yet, but I felt that to walk up and down was a physical and absolute impossibility. A strange and unholy desire for absolute seclusion seized me. A great wave of hatred and disgust of mankind in general suddenly swept over me. The impulse to get away was irresistible—anywhere out of sight of the crowd, where I could not see Lady Manifold still walking briskly up and down and balancing herself with unsteady steps as the awful rolling of the ship increased.