A man of the world and a gentleman, Mr. Effingham had looked forward to this passage with a good deal of concern, on account of his daughter, while he shrank with the sensitiveness of his habits from the necessity of exposing one of her delicacy and plastic simplicity to the intercourse of a ship. Accompanied by Mademoiselle Viefville, watched over by Nanny, and guarded by himself and his kinsman, he had lost some of his apprehensions on the subject during the three probationary days, and now took his stand in the centre of his own party to observe the new arrivals, with something of the security of a man who is entrenched in his own door-way.
The place they occupied, at a window of the hurricane-house, did not admit of a view of the water; but it was sufficiently evident from the preparations in the gangway next the land, that boats were so near as to render that unnecessary.
"_Genus_ cockney; _species_, bagman," muttered John Effingham, as the first arrival touched the deck. "That worthy has merely exchanged the basket of a coach for the deck of a packet; we may now learn the price of buttons."
It did not require a naturalist to detect the species of the stranger, in truth; though John Effingham had been a little more minute in his description than was warranted by the fact. The person in question was one of those mercantile agents that England scatters so profusely over the world, some of whom have all the most sterling qualities of their nation, though a majority, perhaps, are a little disposed to mistake the value of other people as well as their own. This was the _genus_, as John Effingham had expressed it; but the _species_ will best appear on dissection. The master of the ship saluted this person cordially, and as an old acquaintance, by the name of Monday.
"A _mousquetaire_ resuscitated," said Mademoiselle Viefville, in her broken English, as one who had come in the same boat as the first-named, thrust his whiskered and mustachoed visage above the rail of the gangway.
"More probably a barber, who has converted his own head into a wig-block," growled John Effingham.
"It cannot, surely, be Wellington in disguise!" added Mr. Effingham, with a sarcasm of manner that was quite unusual for him.