declaring when the Harlequin was off Ramsgate
that they were "nearly in," and when tossing
about Deal, that her good man – meaning the
steward – had just seen "Bolong light."

There was somebody else who was not sick;
the handsome proud lady, Lily's protectress.
She lay down on a sofa, covered herself with a
great shawl, and went resolutely to sleep. Once
or twice in the course of the night, waking up,
she apostrophised the Harlequin, the company
that owned it, and the captain and crew who
navigated it, in bitterly sarcastic terms. The
stewardess also she was mercilessly hard upon,
for the offence of wearing thick shoes; and more
than once she chid Lily for making a noise.
She tended the suffering child, however, with a
kind of stern tenderness, and then went to sleep
again.

At last this night of torment came to a close.
The Harlequin escaped at break of day from the
buffeting boiling waters of the Channel, into
the smooth waters of the port, and Lily was
carried in the arms of a seaman, who, in his
outward guise, looked very like a grisly bear,
but in his manners was as gentle as a lamb, up
a ladder to a quay. There the seaman set her
down, on the shore of France.

A little man, not so very much taller than Lily,
but with a big moustache, and a huge cutlass, and
a broad sword-belt, and a very tall glazed shako,
immediately seized on the Noah's ark which the
seaman had deposited by Lily's side. The lady
was close by her, but she forbore to seize the
little man by the throat, or to cast him over the
quay into the water. She spoke him very fair, and
called him "Monsieur." Lily noticed that on this
new ground her protectress was quite polite. The
little soldier, however (he had red legs and
bunches of red worsted on his shoulders), was as
fierce as she was mild, and called out in a
formidable voice, "A droite, à la Douane. Marchez
donc!" Those were the days when Waterloo was
still remembered, when international alliances
and treaties of commerce were not thought of, and
when the little soldiers of King Louis Philippe
the First were very apt to be rude to those over
whom they had authority.

Half stupified, trembling and dizzy with the
soonest acquired, worst borne, and easiest cured
of human ailments—dazed with the novelty of
the scene, the glimmering lanterns contending
with the grey dawn, the clash of arms, the
hoarse voices of seamen and porters vociferating
to each other in a strange language—the child
followed her conductors to the custom-house.
But, arrived there, the little inquisitive could not
refrain from asking her companion why all the
soldiers had red legs, and why they seemed so
very angry with everybody?

Soon a stranger sight absorbed her attention.
Along a low wooden bar, or counter, twenty
trunks were arranged wide open, and as many
men all with moustaches, or looking like soldiers,
and all in a great passion, were apparently making
beds. At least they tossed and tumbled the
contents of all the trunks about, as though they
were shaking up feather-beds: an operation which
Lily had often watched with intense interest in
Mrs. Bunnycastle's sleeping apartment at
Rhododendron House. The bearded gentleman who
had given her the chocolate was in the very
thickest of the confusion, and had at least half
a dozen trunks to be tossed and tumbled over. He
brandished a huge bunch of keys, and seemed
quite as angry as the men who looked like
soldiers.

At length it came to the turn of Lily and her
protectress. One of the soldiers asked the lady
if she had anything to "declare;" whereupon
she looked as though she would have very much
liked to declare war upon him; but she was on
her behaviour now, and observed that she had
nothing liable to duty. Lily's little outfit was
rummaged with a recklessness that would have
driven to fury even the placable Mr. Ranns at
Cutwig and Co.'s; and the lady's store of
purple and fine linen was recklessly rumpled,
and then crammed back again into her portmanteau,
as though it were so many old rags.

Even when the trunks were re-locked, and
their lids inscribed with cabalistic flourishes in
chalk, their troubles were not at an end; for
they were conducted into a naked, whitewashed
apartment, over the door of which the word
"Sûreté" was written, and there were subjected,
at the hands of perhaps the ugliest and snuffiest
old woman who ever wore gold rings in her ears
and a mob-cap on her head, to the indignity of a
personal search. It is scarcely needful to say that
there were no smuggled commodities about Lily.
There was very little outside her, and nothing at
all inside her but nausea. The lady, also, passed
scathless through an abominable ordeal which has
happily become a thing of the past; but she
contrived to lose her temper, and gave the old woman
a piece of her mind—the which assumed such
formidable dimensions, that the female searcher
began to yell for "la garde," and the lady had to
quiet her with a five-franc piece. There were some
other ladies, however, who gave even more trouble.
One went into hysterics, another vowed she
would write to the Times, and a third made
reiterated and passionate appeals to her "Henry"
(meaning her absent husband), who was himself
being searched in an adjoining apartment, strewing
flowers of eloquence of the strongest Britannic
odour on two maglignant douaniers. I think
all the ladies who screamed contrived to smuggle
something; and, as Lily passed out, she saw
one—the lady who had been so very anxious
to be thrown overboard—being unwound of
innumerable strips of contraband textile fabrics as
though she had been a bad leg.

Outside the custom-house there was much
crowding and shouting; and a mob of shabby
men, whose hair looked dreadfully in want of
cutting, encircled the travellers, thrusting
cards into their hands, and bawling out the
names of different hotels. And, staggering
before her, Lily saw an old woman—the twin