It was difficult amid all those half-naked men pressing round, in the unbearable heat of the gundeck.
As he thought she would do, in the beginning of her letter Granny Moan explained why she had had to take recourse to the inexperienced hand of an old neighbour: "My dear child, I don't ask your cousin to write for me to-day, as she is in great trouble.

Her father died suddenly two days ago.

It appears that his whole fortune has been lost through unlucky gambling last winter in Paris.

So his house and furniture will have to be sold.

Nobody in the place was expecting this.