Nay," replied Mrs. Jackson, "I've never had no mind for shipboard,
though my second cousin was stewardess on a Channel steamer for a
matter of fifteen year, and made a tidy sum out of it too. She could
have got me taken on by the Anchor Line as runs to America if I'd have
signed for two years. That was when my first husband died, and afore I
married Jackson; but I felt I'd rather starve on dry land than take it,
though it was good wages they offered, to say nothing of tips."

"Why, it would be glorious to go to America," said Isobel, sighing to
think what her companion had missed. "You might have seen Red Indians,
and wigwams, and medicine men, and 'robes of fur and belts of wampum,'
like it talks of in 'Hiawatha.' Do you know 'Hiawatha'?"

"There were an old steamer of that name used to trade from Liverpool in
hides and tallow when I were a girl, if that's the one you mean. I
wonder she hasn't foundered afore now."

"Oh no!" cried Isobel hastily. "It isn't a steamer; it's a piece of
poetry. I've just been reading it with mother, and it's most delightful.
I could lend it to you if you like. We brought the book with us."

Mrs. Jackson's acquaintance with the muse, however, seemed to be limited
to the hymns in church, and a hazy remembrance of certain pieces in her
spelling book when a child, and being apparently unwilling to further
cultivate her mind in that direction, she declined the offer on the
score of lack of time.

"Not but what Jackson's fond of a bit of poetry now and again," she
admitted. "He sings a good song or two when he's in the mood, and he do
like readin' over the verses on the funeral cards. He pins them all up
on the kitchen wall where he can get at them handy. What suits me more
is something in the way of a romance--'Lady Gwendolen's Lovers,' or 'The
Black Duke's Secret'--when I've time to take up a book, which isn't
often, with three sets of lodgers in the house, and a girl as can't even
remember how to make a bed properly, to say nothing of laying a table,
and 'ull take the dining-room dinner up to the drawing-room."

The much-enduring Polly, though certainly not an accomplished waitress,
was the most good-tempered of girls, and an invaluable ally in saving
the treasured specimens of flowers or sea-weeds which Mrs. Jackson, in
her praiseworthy efforts at tidiness, was continually clearing out,
under the plea that she "hadn't imagined they could be wanted."

"She even threw away my mermaids' p