e cheerful, hopeful
smile upon her lips no one would ever have known how her heart was longing
for her lover as she went about her work; for the little housekeeper had
quite too much to do in keeping the cottage clean, the garden weedless,
the nets mended, to be able to neglect one duty for any love-sick fancies
it might be pleasant to indulge. From morning till night her days were
full in bringing happiness to others: there was her father to make
comfortable; there were the sick old women, of whom her aunt brought word,
to concoct some delicacy for--a cup of custard, to wit, a dish of the
water-jelly she had learned how to make from the sea-moss she gathered on
the beach, a broiled and buttered mushroom from the garden; there were the
canaries and the cat to be cared for, and the dog that Andrew left with
her to feed and shower caresses on; and there was the parrot's toilet to
be made and her lesson to be taught, and the single jars of preserves and
pickles and ketchups to be put up for winter, and the herbs to be dried:
there were not, you may see, many minutes to be wasted out of that busy
little life in castle-building or in crying. One day there came a letter
with Victoria's head and the Liverpool stamp upon it: she knew it by heart
presently, and wore it next her heart by night and day; and even if she
had known that Miss Frarnie Maurice received one in the same handwriting
by the same mail, it would hardly have made much difference to her; and
one day the Sabrina, all freshly coppered and painted and repaired, with
new masts and sails, and so much else that it was not easy to say what
part of her now represented the old brig, came round to her old wharf and
began to take in cargo. Louie ran down one evening with her father, and
went all over her from stem to stern, only one old sailor being aboard;
and she could have told you then every rope from clew to ear-ring; and, as
if it were all the realization of a dream, a thousand happy, daring
thoughts of herself and Andrew then filled her fancy like birds in a nest;
and so swiftly after that did one day flow into another for Louie that the
Frarnie lay in the mid-stream once more before she had more than begun to
count the days to that on which her Liverpool letter had promised that she
should see its writer come walking into her father's cottage again.

But she never did see him come walking into her father's cottage again.
That promised day passed and the night, and a