on her nose, on her leanness, and
on the way, unless constantly reminded not to, she drooped.

But Anna-Rose secretly considered that the same nose that on her own
face made no sort of a show at all, directly it got on to
Anna-Felicitas's somehow was the dearest nose; and that her leanness was
lovely,--the same sort of slender grace her mother had had in the days
before the heart-breaking emaciation that was its last phase; and that
her head was set so charmingly on her neck that when she drooped and
forgot her father's constant injunction to sit up,--"For," had said her
father at monotonously regular intervals, "a maiden should be as
straight as a fir-tree,"--she only seemed to fall into even more
attractive lines than when she didn't. And now that Anna-Rose alone had
the charge of looking after this abstracted and so charming younger
sister, she felt it her duty somehow to convey to her while tactfully
avoiding putting ideas into the poor child's head which might make her
conceited, that it behoved her to conduct herself with discretion.

But she found tact a ticklish thing, the most difficult thing of all to
handle successfully; and on this occasion hers was so elaborate, and so
carefully wrapped up in Scriptural language, and German Scripture at
that, that Anna-Felicitas's slow mind didn't succeed in disentangling
her meaning, and after a space of staring at her with a mild inquiry in
her eyes, she decided that perhaps she hadn't got one. She was much too
polite though, to say so, and they sat in silence under the rug till the
_St. Luke_ whistled and stopped, and Anna-Rose began hastily to make
conversation about Christopher and Columbus.

She was ashamed of having shown so much of her woe at leaving England.
She hoped Anna-Felicitas hadn't noticed. She certainly wasn't going on
like that. When the _St. Luke_ whistled, she was ashamed that it wasn't
only Anna-Felicitas who jumped. And the amount of brightness she put
into her voice when she told Anna-Felicitas it was pleasant to go and
discover America was such that that young lady, who if slow was sure,
said to herself, "Poor little Anna-R., she's really taking it dreadfully
to heart."

The _St. Luke_ was only dropping anchor for the night in the Mersey, and
would go on at daybreak. They gathered this from the talk of passengers
walking up and down the deck in twos and threes and passing and
repassing the chairs containing the silent figures with the round heads