Hope could do no less than comply, and the bulky missive was received by the listeners with as much respectful enjoyment as if it had been a neat-appearing, well-worded epistle, instead of the rambling, disjointed, much-soiled, and oddly-expressed letter that it was. The good woman began and ended every paragraph with lamentations and longings over her darlings, and the lines between told of her 'good' and 'bad' lodgers, as she distinctly divided them, her few pleasure jaunts, and some of the gossip of the neighborhood, only a few words of which concern this little history.
"You'll recklict," she wrote, "the leddy what come jest a dey or too before yoo saled? Well, shees heer yit and I like 'er best ov al. She ain't to say real lively, yoo no, but shese good compny, and ken talk good on most enny sub-jick, and she ain't abuv spending a 'our with old Debby now'n then either. She is thee wun what is riting yure names on this verry letter—ain't it good ov 'er?"
"Who is this lodger?" asked the captain. "I don't remember seeing her."
The girls looked at each other inquiringly.
"Don't you remember, Hope?"
"I didn't suppose you'd forget, Faith!" were their simultaneous remarks, as each began to laugh.
"No," said Hope then, "I can't remember at all; but I know she was looking at our rooms just the day before we sailed, and we thought her very ladylike and pleasant. Don't you know how interested she seemed in our voyage, and how we thought her an American, then recalled afterwards that we had not found out whether she was or not?"
"Yes, it does come back to me," said Faith, and the talk drifted into other home matters, not essential here.
The next day was more sultry than any they had yet experienced, and the decks were filled with loungers. Hope and Bess, however, were deeply occupied over some new stitch in embroidery, that one was teaching the other, and Faith, who had been romping with the little ones till warm and weary, thought, while resting in a deep steamer-chair by herself, that she would give dear old Debby's letter a second reading. As she drew it from her pocket for that purpose, and removed the envelope, a little puff of wind caught the latter from her lap, and sent it lightly skimming down the deck. Faith, quite unheeding, read on, smiling over her nurse's peculiar spelling, and the envelope sped along its way unchecked, an unconscious instrument of fate. As if heaven-directed, it presently swerved a trifle from its first course, fluttered to and fro an instant, then neared a woman, who sat listlessly by herself, her arms resting upon those of her chair and her eyes, dark and sad, fastened upon the far horizon. There was a tense quiet in her attitude that seemed to cover something most unlike quietude within.
A slight noise at her side broke the spell of her gloomy musing and, glancing down, she saw the bit of stiff paper lying motionless beside her, and thinking it something she might herself have dropped, reached idly down and picked it up.