"Oh, I wish I hadn't come! I wish I had listened to Cissy's warnings! Why did Mr. Standish treat me like this? He is a mean wretch, and I'll never, never speak to him again!"
Poor little Geraldine, so lovely and so impulsive, if she had kept to that resolution, this story would never have been written. Her life would have flowed on too quietly and happily to have tempted a novelist's pen.
But "fate is above us all."
She looked about her despairingly for a friendly face among all those strangers.
Her tearful eyes encountered the gaze of a fireman who had been covertly watching her ever since she came on board.
He was a magnificent specimen of athletic young manhood, his fine straight figure setting off to advantage his resplendent uniform of dark-blue, with fawn-colored facings and gilt buttons. His face was bold, handsome, and winning, with a straight nose, laughing dark-blue eyes, a dark, curling mustache, while beneath his blue cap clustered beautiful blue-black curls, fine and glossy as a woman's hair.
When Geraldine's appealing eyes met the admiring gaze of this young man it paused and lingered as if held by some irresistible attraction, and, advancing to her, he lifted his blue cap courteously from his handsome head, saying, kindly:
"You seem to be in trouble, miss. Can I help you?"
Thus encouraged by his kind look and tone, the girl faltered out her distressing plight: