“P. S. Savannah is such a fine city and so many trees and roses that it seems strange to me that Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte did not try to take it, being both men who never minded their own business but always trying to take what did not belong to them, speshally the latter whom in my heart I heartily despise because he never did as he would be done by.”
V.
BELLE’S HOME.
You may be sure there was not much trouble in gaining the consent of Lucy’s father to the plan proposed for her welfare. He was only too glad and thankful to feel that his motherless little daughter would be placed where she would have a kind and prudent eye to oversee and guide her; and where she would have the opportunity of growing up into a useful and steady woman. This he knew she could not do in the unsettled life she now led on board ship with him, and he had long been considering what he should do with her.
Lucy, though thankful, was not as much pleased, and shed some bitter tears over the prospect. The poor child wanted to learn, and was glad to have a settled home; but she dreaded the thought of parting from her father, who would only be able to see her at such times as his vessel should be at the port of Savannah, and who was the only person whom she had to love her. But, in a day or two after, when she had seen Mrs. Gordon, and heard her talk so kindly of all the pleasures and comforts she would find in this promised home, she became more reconciled to it, especially as the autumn still seemed a long way off to her, and she had all the summer to go back and forth with her father on the sea.
So she told her troubles to her doll; and the steady, blue eyes, which never winked or softened, brought comfort to her, and seemed to give her the assurance that she need not be parted from her, even to go to her new home. If she had not had this beloved companion, it would have gone much harder with poor little Lucy.