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"Were you ill coming over in the steamer?"

"What?" inquired Marian.

Mrs. Van Tromp repeated her question, adding, "I always feel every revolution of the screw myself."

"What means she?" asked Marian of Macfarren. "Steamer—screw—what are they? I never saw them in Suffolk, or Norfolk either."

Macfarren felt perfectly helpless. How could he explain it to her? For the first time he floundered.

"Steam, you know," he said, blunderingly,—"the steam that comes out of a teakettle—"

"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Van Tromp, who had not exactly taken in what Marian had said. "Doesn't it seem strange that it should propel a ship three hundred miles a day across the ocean? Dear me!"

"The steam from a teakettle propel a ship three hundred miles a day! Madam, either thou art grossly deceived, or else thou—"

"But perhaps you came over in a yacht," cried Mrs. Van Tromp, thinking the lady Marian unused to the records of the Cunarders and White Star ships, in which passengers are so profoundly interested. "Of course on a yacht it is quite different, you know. There isn't any object in covering so many miles a day. But I must say I like fast traveling. The slowest time we ever made in crossing was two hundred miles a day, and we were out nearly fourteen days."