"There!" said Rollo; "I was pretty sure that she could understand English."
The child did not understand English, however, after all. And yet she understood what Rollo said; for it so happens, by a remarkable coincidence, that the German words for "come here," though spelled differently, sound almost precisely like the English words. Besides, the child knew from Rollo's gesture that he wished her to come to him.
Rollo attempted to talk with the child, but he could make no progress. The child could not understand any thing that he said. Presently a very pleasant-looking woman who was sitting on a trunk near by, and who proved to be the child's mother, shook her head smilingly at Rollo, and said, with a very foreign accent, pointing at the same time to the child, "Not understands English."
Mr. George then held a little conversation with this woman in German. She told him that she was the mother of the child, and that the old woman who was reading near was its grandmother. She had a husband, she said, and two other children. Her husband was on the shore. He had gone into the city to make some purchases for the voyage, and her two other children had gone with him to see what was to be seen.
Mr. George and Rollo, after this, walked about the deck of the ship for some time, looking at the various family groups that were scattered here and there, and holding conversations with many of the people. The persons whom they talked with all looked up with an expression of great animation and pleasure in their countenances when they learned that their visitors were Americans, and seemed much gratified to see them. I suppose they considered them very favorable specimens
of the people of the country which they were going to make their future home.
I am sure that they needed all the kind words and encouraging looks that Mr. George and Rollo bestowed upon them; for it is a very serious and solemn business for a family to bid a final farewell to their native land, and in many instances to the whole circle of their acquaintances and friends, in order to cross the stormy ocean and seek a home in what is to them an entirely new world.
PLEASANT WEATHER.