r breeze,--nor was she one that, once
seen, could be easily forgotten.

Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual
chubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undulating
and aerial grace, such as one might dream of for some mythic and
allegorical being. Her face was remarkable less for its perfect beauty
of feature than for a singular and dreamy earnestness of expression,
which made the ideal start when they looked at her, and by which the
dullest and most literal were impressed, without exactly knowing why.
The shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust was peculiarly
noble, and the long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around
it, the deep spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by heavy
fringes of golden brown,--all marked her out from other children, and
made every one turn and look after her, as she glided hither and thither
on the boat. Nevertheless, the little one was not what you would have
called either a grave child or a sad one. On the contrary, an airy and
innocent playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer leaves
over her childish face, and around her buoyant figure. She was always
in motion, always with a half smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither and
thither, with an undulating and cloud-like tread, singing to herself
as she moved as in a happy dream. Her father and female guardian were
incessantly busy in pursuit of her,--but, when caught, she melted from
them again like a summer cloud; and as no word of chiding or reproof
ever fell on her ear for whatever she chose to do, she pursued her own
way all over the boat. Always dressed in white, she seemed to move like
a shadow through all sorts of places, without contracting spot or stain;
and there was not a corner or nook, above or below, where those fairy
footsteps had not glided, and that visionary golden head, with its deep
blue eyes, fleeted along.

The fireman, as he looked up from his sweaty toil, sometimes found those
eyes looking wonderingly into the raging depths of the furnace, and
fearfully and pityingly at him, as if she thought him in some dreadful
danger. Anon the steersman at the wheel paused and smiled, as the
picture-like head gleamed through the window of the round house, and
in a moment was gone again. A thousand times a day rough voices blessed
her, and smiles of unwonted softness stole over hard faces, as she
passed; and when she tripped fearlessly over d