de her way across the slowly heaving
planks to starboard. Glancing quickly upward as she went, she colored
gloriously, for looking down straight at her from behind the rail
which edged the elevated platform of the prosperous, stood the youth
who had picked up her father's bag as they had come on board, and
whose eyes, since the first day of the voyage, she had found it wise
to dodge if she would keep the crimson from her cheeks.

Not that there had been anything, at any time, in the youth's gaze
which could offend; rather had there been in it that which bewitched
and thrilled. There was not another girl upon that steerage-deck who
would not have been immensely pleased by and who would not have shyly
answered his admiring glances, had they turned toward her, although
there probably was not a girl there who was other than quite sweet and
pure. Purity and sweetness are no bars to answering a glance and
giggling. But he paid no heed, at all, to pretty emigrants who would
have been delighted by flirtatious glances. It may, in fact, have been
because of the shy fright, not in the least resentful, but sweetly,
girlishly embarrassed, with which Anna greeted his, whenever her eyes
caught them, that he turned them toward her so exclusively and
frequently. Admiring youth called to admiring youth in surreptitious
glances from the high deck to the lower, and, it may be, from the
steerage-deck up to the promenade.

But, although she found no slightest thing offensive in the young
man's veiled, approving surveillance, Anna felt almost as if she were
in flight from peril--some brand-new, delightful peril--as, now, she
hurried out of range of it and sought her father where, by the
after-hatch, he perched upon a great coiled cable staring, staring,
staring out across the sea toward Germany, the land to which, a few
days since, although his actual departure had been from English
shores, his heart had said a passionate farewell.

If Anna, with her graceful form, her delicately-colored, healthful
cheeks, her cleancut and dainty features, offered a strong contrast
to the buxom German maidens, dark, big-eyed Italian girls and others
of the many-nationed women-travelers upon that steerage-deck, her
father offered as strong contrast to the men. Among the swart
Italians, blonde, stupid-looking Swedes, Danes and Norwegians and fat,
red-faced Germans of the male steerage company, his finely-chiselled
features, pale and ascetic-looking in their