"BEFORE THE DAY WAS OVER THE TWO WERE TALKING TOGETHER LIKE OLD FRIENDS."
Mildred answered with a shiver. "Oh, I try not to think about that at all. I have never seen Uncle Joe or any of his family, and everything must be so strange and queer in America. Now, if they lived in India I would not dread going half so much; for there would be something homelike in feeling that I was still under the protection of our queen. I cannot bear to think of leaving the ship, for it will be like leaving the last bit of home, to step from under the dear old Union Jack. 'A stranger in a strange land,'" she added, her lips quivering.
"No, dear, not as strange as you think," added the lady, with a motherly hand-clasp. "Don't you know that one corner of our country is called New England, in loving remembrance of the old; that your blood flows in our veins regardless of dividing seas, and gives us the same heritage of that proud past which you hold dear? Don't you know that thousands of us go back every year, like children of the old homestead, drawn by all those countless threads of song and story, of common interests and aims and relationships that have kept the two nations woven together in the woof of one great family?
"Let me tell you a bit of personal sentiment that links me to the old town of Chester on the River Dee. There is a house there that, until recently, was in the possession of my husband's family for nobody knows how many generations. Thousands of travellers go every year to see the inscription over its door. Once, over two hundred years ago, an awful plague swept the town, and every family in it lost one or more of its household. Only this one house was spared, and in grateful memory of its escape there was carved over the door the inscription:
"'GOD'S PROVIDENCE IS MINE INHERITANCE.'
"That became the family motto, and it is engraved here in my wedding-ring. The beautiful thought has helped me over many times of perplexity and sorrow, and has become the inspiration of my life. Because we can trace it back to that place, I have grown to love every stone in the quaint old streets of Chester."
She sat twisting the plain gold circlet on her finger for a moment, and then added thoughtfully: "In the light of her history America might well set that inscription over her own door: 'God's providence is mine inheritance.' It would be none the less appropriate because it reaches back past the struggling colonists and past the Mayflower to find the roots of that faith in the mother country, in a little English town beside the Dee.
"No, my dear," she exclaimed, looking up at Mildred; "it is not a land of strangers you are going to. We sing 'America' and you sing 'God Save the Queen,' and we both feel sometimes that there is a vast difference between the songs. But they are set to the same tune, you know, and to alien ears, who cannot understand our tongue or our temperament, they must sound alike."