hate a man when he's humble! Let him be modest if you like, but not humble. 'Yes, I admit I've failed. But there is this, Miss Fairfax: I did my best, and I don't believe anybody on earth would have succeeded better.'
I knew he was right, but I wished he was wrong, so I'm afraid I was rather hard on Major Street. One generally is hard on people who tell one unpleasant things that one knows to be true and wishes were not.
So the days passed in blessful happiness for Boy, and we grew gradually near Bombay. I have been so occupied in setting down all this about Boy that I find I haven't said anything at all about most of the other passengers. Some of them really were worth writing about—as freaks. You could scarcely have picked up a more motley and incongruous crew if you had searched all through the English-speaking world. At the head of society on the Arethusa of course were the four Dukes and Duchesses. Duke number one was big and portly and jovial. He talked to everybody. He might have been running for Parliament, and we his constituents. He even went over into the second-class, and report says that he even kissed a baby, though I believe that was only board-ship gossip. Duke number two was the very reverse—cold, self-contained, impenetrable, with rather dreamy eyes and hair like a poet's—if poets really do wear long hair—and a manner calculated to freeze at fifty yards. He used to sit mostly alone, and you would have thought that nobody cared to speak to him if you hadn't
