e
excellent cakes, which formed part of her stock-in-trade. One of these
she insisted on my putting into my pocket "against the hungry hour." I
thanked her warmly for the gift, whereupon she became mollified, and
said I was kindly welcome; and whilst she was serving some customers, I
turned round and looked at the ship. Late as it was, people seemed very
busy about her, rather more so than about any I had seen. As I sat, I
was just opposite to a yawning hole in the ship's side, into which men
were noisily running great bales and boxes, which other men on board
were lowering into the depths of the vessel with very noisy machinery
and with much shouting in a sort of uncouth rhythm, to which the grating
and bumping of the crane and its chains was a trifle. I was so absorbed
by looking, and it was so impossible to hear anything else unless one
were attending, that I never discovered that Biddy and I were alone
again, till the touch of her hand on my head made me jump.

"I beg your pardon, Mother," I said; "I couldn't think what it was."

"I ax yours, dear. It's just the curls, and I'm the foolish woman to
look at 'em. Barrin' the hair, ye don't favour each other the laste."

I had really heard a good deal about Micky, and was getting tired of
him, and inclined to revert to my own affairs.

"Mother, do you know where this ship comes from?"

"I do not. But she sails with the morning for Halifax, I'm told. And
that's America way, and I insensed the cook--that was him that axed me
where I bought my coffee--to have an eye out for Micky, in case he might
come across him anywhere."

America way! To-morrow morning! A storm of thoughts rushed through my
head, and in my passionate longing for help I knelt up by the old
Irishwoman and laid my hand upon hers.

"Mother dear, do help me! You are so kind, and you've a boy of your own
at sea. I want to go to America, and I've no papers or anything.
Couldn't I stow away as Micky did? Couldn't I stow away on this one? I
can work well enough when they find me out, if I could only hide so as
to get off; and you know the ships and the docks so well, you could tell
me how, if only you would."

I am always ashamed to remember the feeble way in which I finished off
by breaking down, though I do not know that I could have used any
argument that would have gone so far with Biddy. If it had been a man
who had been befriending me, I'm sure I shouldn't have played the fool,
but it was a woman,