I Forbid the Banns! — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

86 “7 FORBID THE BANNS!” While the chorus was being sung sotto voce by some of Waring’s friends around a cabin skylight, the matrons sat mute and severe in the saloon, and glanced significantly at one another, when a roar of laughter followed the vulgar song. Not for some days did they learn that that horrid girl who was so outrageously fond of the society of men, had actually been making fools of them—the matrons of many a campaign. Thus the days went on, until the steamer had gained the latitude of Finistére ; and Marian Travers stood on the grating beside the wheel, watching Charlton and Bertha standing side by side at the bulwarks, trying if they could see land. | It was a foregone conclusion, she admitted. At the bulwarks on the opposite side of the ship Cyril Southcote had found an audience of one, and his words sounded—as he meant they should—througha considerable radius. ‘ My dear fellow,” he was saying, “the greatest happiness that can ever come to a man in this life is to meet the woman who refused to marry him ten years before.”’ ‘‘ And what about the woman who meets the man who refused to marry her ten years before?” asked Cyril’s audience. «She also is happy,” said the philosopher. “Happy? How?” “She flings her children in his face,” said Cyril. ‘That’s rather rough on the children,” said his com- panion. Marian Travers pondered upon this philosophy. She sent her eyes out over the great deep. There also she found comfort. She knew that that element contained as fine fish as were ever hooked by man-—or woman. (CORNICE LIOOLKS (E(0)