The wind continued to increase, the steamer pitched heavily; but the two children, who did not suffer from seasickness, paid no heed to it. The little girl smiled. She was about the same age as her companion, but was considerably taller, brown of complexion, slender, somewhat sickly, and dressed more than modestly. Her hair was short and curling, she wore a red kerchief over her head, and two hoops of silver in her ears.
As they ate, they talked about themselves and their affairs. The boy had no longer either father or mother. The father, an artisan, had died a few days previously in Liverpool, leaving him alone; and the Italian consul had sent him back to his country, to Palermo, where he had still some distant relatives left. The little girl had been taken to London, the year before, by a widowed aunt, who was very fond of her, and to whom her parents—poor people—had given her for a time, trusting in a promise of an inheritance; but the aunt had died a few months later, run over by an omnibus, without leaving a centesimo; and then she too had had recourse to the consul, who had shipped her to Italy. Both had been recommended to the care of the Italian sailor.—“So,” concluded the little maid, “my father and mother thought that I would return rich, and instead I am returning poor. But they will love me all the same. And so will my brothers. I have four, all small. I am the oldest at home. I dress them. They will be greatly delighted to see me. They will come in on tiptoe—The sea is ugly!”
Then she asked the boy: “And are you going to stay with your relatives?”
“Yes—if they want me.”
“I don’t know.”
“I shall be thirteen at Christmas,” said the girl.
Then they began to talk about the sea, and the people on board around them. They remained near each other all day, exchanging a few words now and then. The passengers thought them brother and sister. The girl knitted at a stocking, the boy meditated, the sea continued to grow rougher. At night, as they parted to go to bed, the girl said to Mario, “Sleep well.”
“No one will sleep well, my poor children!” exclaimed the Italian sailor as he ran past, in answer to a call from the captain. The boy was on the point of replying with a “good night” to his little friend, when an unexpected dash of water dealt him a violent blow, and flung him against a seat.
“My dear, you are bleeding!” cried the girl, flinging herself upon him. The passengers who were making their escape below, paid no heed to them. The child knelt down beside Mario, who had been stunned by the blow, wiped the blood from his brow, and pulling the red kerchief from her hair, she bound it about his head, then pressed his head to her breast in order to knot the ends, and thus received a spot of blood on her yellow bodice just above the girdle. Mario shook himself and rose: