"And who is heartily glad to see you," cried Ned.
[CHAPTER II.]
THE LITTLE MAID.
NED and Norah very soon made friends with one another. There was a cheerful kindliness about the maimed sailor, that set the young girl at her ease.
"He seems so frank and pleasant," thought Norah, "and there's such a bright honest look in his eyes, that I'm sure I shall like him extremely."
"She's a trim little vessel," thought the sailor, "with a pretty figure-head of her own; but I wish that she carried a little less bunting, she'd look better without all those flowers."
Norah had indeed a sweet innocent face, but her dress was not such as beseemed her station in life—it showed an effort to look fine, which did not prevent it from looking shabby. The gay-coloured dress was stuck out by a hoop; the bonnet, which was rather an old one, was trimmed with some large half-faded pink flowers. To the simple-minded sailor it became the young maiden so ill that he was glad when it was taken off, and Norah's neatly braided hair appeared the sole ornament of her head.
But Mrs. Peele was not of the sailor's opinion. "My dear, what pretty flowers!" she exclaimed, taking up the bonnet in her hand, and turning it round to admire the trimming.
"Sophy Puller gave the flowers to me: was it not kind?" said Norah. "And she gave me this too," she added, pulling out of her dress a gaudy glass brooch, made to imitate diamonds and rubies.
Mrs. Peele was charmed with the brooch, and handed it over to Ned, who held it between his finger and thumb, looked at it for a moment, and then returned it in silence to its owner.