sing around her, until she
heard the sound of suppressed weeping, so close to her that it seemed
almost in her ear.

Opening her eyes, she saw a young girl sitting on the floor, with her
head upon the berth next to her own, sobbing convulsively and whispering
to herself:

"Oh, me father, me father; me heart is breaking for you. What'll ye do
without yer Jennie, when the nights are dark and long. Oh, me poor old
father, I wish I had niver come. We might have starved together."

"Poor girl," Bessie said, pityingly, as she stretched out her hand and
touched the bowed head, "I am so sorry for you. Is your father old, and
why did you leave him?"

At the sound of the sweet voice, so full of sympathy, the girl started
quickly, and turning to Bessie, looked at her wonderingly; then, as if
by some subtle intuition she recognized the difference there was between
herself and the stranger whose beautiful face fascinated her so
strongly, she said:

"Oh, lady--an' sure you be a lady, even if you are here with the likes
of me--I had to lave me father, we was so poor and the taxes is so high,
and the rint so big intirely, and the landlord a-threatenin' of us to
set us in the road any foine mornin'; and so I'm goin' to Ameriky to
take a place; me cousin left to be married, and if I does well--an' sure
I'll try me best--I gets two pounds a month, and ivery penny I'll save
to bring the old father over. But you cannot be going out to work, and
have you left your father?"

"My father is dead, and mother, too," Bessie answered, with a sob. "I
have left them both in their graves. I _am_ going out to work, but I
have no place waiting for me like you, and I do not know of a friend in
the world who can help me."

"An' faith, then, you can just count on me, Jennie Mahoney," the
impulsive Irish girl exclaimed, stretching out her hand to Bessie. "You
spoke kind like to me when me heart was fit to break, and it's meself
will stand by you and take care of ye, too, as if ye was the greatest
lady in the land, as ye might be, for I knows very well that the likes
of ye has nought to do with the likes of me; an' if them spalpeens dares
to come round a speerin' at ye, it's meself will shovel out their eyes
with me nails. I know 'em. They are on every ship, and they are on this.
I heard one of 'em say when I come aboard, 'By Jove, Hank, that's a neat
Biddy, I think I'll cultivate her.' Cultivate me, indade! I'll Hank him.
Let him come anigh you or