"Certain she is: who wouldn't be? She has to stay in the house then; and she doesn't like it. Would you? How can persons be good when they don't have what they want?"
By this time a nice, motherly-looking old English woman had heard the talk, and came forward to the door.
"Missy," she said, "always thinks Pinky is bad when she is bad herself; and Missy is most always cross when it rains."
"What is your name?" Miss Hurlburt asked, bending to smooth the black curls.
"Berenice Ashford," the child answered, in a slow, painstaking manner, as if the words had been taught her with care; "but they don't call me that,—they call me 'Missy.'"
"Is she your grandchild?" was the next question, addressed to the elderly woman, who had set a chair near the door and asked the young lady to sit down.
"No, that she isn't, and I would like much to find out whose child she is. To be sure, I should miss her more than a little, if I had to part with her: but, all the same, I should like to find her kindred. She belongs to gentle-folks, and I can't do for her what ought to be done."
A few more questions drew out the whole story. The woman, Mrs. Smith, had a son in America, who was doing well at his trade of dyeing; and he had sent for her to come out to him. He had sent money enough for her expenses, and she had taken passage in the second cabin of a steamer.
Among her fellow-passengers were Missy and her mother,—the latter a beautiful young lady, Mrs. Smith said, but very pale and sad. She had complained sometimes of a keen and terrible pain in her heart; but she had made little conversation with any one. When they were five days out, she had been found in the morning dead in her berth, with Missy sound asleep beside her.