oing in, but a humble vessel belonging to the port, which
would carry them cheap.

"Now, my love," said the husband. "Now, Miss Smith," taking the child
from her. "Words cannot tell...."

And if words could have told, the tongue could not have uttered them. It
was little, too, that his wife could say.

"Write to us. Be sure you write. We shall write as soon as we arrive.
Write to us."

Miss Smith glanced at the hand. She said only one word, "Farewell!" but
she said it cheerfully.

The steam-tug was in a hurry, and down the river they went. She had one
more appointment to keep with them. She was to wave her handkerchief
from the rocks by the fort; and the children were to let her try whether
she could see their little handkerchiefs. So she walked quickly over the
common to the fort, and sat down on the beach at the top of the rocks.

It was very well that she had something to do. But the plan did not
altogether answer. By the time the vessel crossed the bar it was nearly
dark, and she was not quite sure, among three, which it was, and she did
not suppose the children could see her handkerchief. She waved it,
however, according to promise. How little they knew how wet it was!

Then there was the walk home. It was familiar, yet very strange. When
she was a child her parents used to bring her here, in the summer time,
for sea air and bathing. The haven and the old gray bathing houses, and
the fort, and the lighthouse, and the old priory ruins crowning the
rocks, were all familiar to her; but the port had so grown up that all
else was strange. And how strange now was life to her! Her parents gone,
many years back, and her two sisters since; and now, the Morells! She
had never had any money to lose, and the retired way in which the
Morells lived had prevented her knowing any body out of their house. She
had not a relation nor a friend, nor even an acquaintance, in England.
The Morells had not been uneasy about her. They left her a little money,
and had so high an opinion of her that they did not doubt her being
abundantly employed, whenever her hand should get well. They had lived
too much to themselves to know that her French, learned during the war,
when nobody in England could pronounce French, would not do in these
days, nor that her trilling, old-fashioned style of playing on the
piano, which they thought so beautiful, would be laughed at now in any
boarding school; and that her elegant needleworks were quite out