in's very own self was coming home.

"I shall have a papa all to myself very soon, Nurse," said Ida. "He
has written a letter to me, and made me a picture of his ship; it is
the 'Bonne Esperance,' which he says means Good Hope. I love this
letter better than anything he has ever sent me."

Nevertheless, Ida took out the carved fans and workboxes, the beads,
and handkerchiefs, and feathers, the dainty foreign treasures the
sailor-father had sent to her from time to time; dusted them, kissed
them, and told them that the Captain was coming home. But the letter
she wore in her pocket by day, and kept under her pillow by night.

"Why don't you put your letter into one of your boxes, like a tidy
young lady, Miss Ida?" said Nurse. "You'll wear it all to bits doing
as you do."

"It will last till the ship comes home," said Miss Ida.

It had need then to have been written on the rock, graven with an iron
pen for ever; for the "Bonne Esperance" (like other earthly hopes) had
perished to return no more. She foundered on her homeward voyage, and
went down into the great waters, whilst Ida slept through the stormy
night, with the Captain's letter beneath her pillow.

Alas! Alas! Alas!

* * * * *

Two or three months had now passed away since Ida became an orphan.
She had become accustomed to the crape-hung frock; she had learnt to
read the Captain's letter as the memorial of a good hope which it had
pleased God to disappoint; she was fairly happy again. It was in the
midst of that new desolation in her lonely life that she had come to
stay with her great-uncle, and had begun to watch the doings of the
little old lady who lived over the way. When dolls seemed vanity, and
Noah's Ark a burden, it had been a quiet amusement, demanding no
exertion, to see what little she could see of the old lady's life, and
to speculate about what she could not; to wonder and fancy what Mrs.
Overtheway looked like without her bonnet, and what she did with
herself when she was not at church. Ida's imagination did not carry
her far. She believed her friend to be old, immeasurably old,
indefinitely old; and had a secret faith that she had never been
otherwise. She felt sure that she wore a cap indoors, and that it was
a nicer one than Nurse's; that she had real tea, with sugar and cream,
instead of milk-and-water, and hot toast rather than bread-and-treacle
for tea; that she helped herself at meals, and went to bed a