Mrs. Clarke was a kind, amiable, good woman, but very feeble, nervous, and sickly, and very little qualified for the arduous and fatiguing life she had chosen.
“My dear nurse,” said Flora, clasping her hand in her own, “I should only be too happy to have you. But you are old, and in delicate health; the climate would kill you; I much doubt whether you could stand the voyage. I cannot be so selfish as to take you from your home and friends at your time of life. But take off your hat and shawl, and we will talk the matter over.”
The old woman laid the now sleeping babe in the cradle, and resumed her seat with a sigh.
“It is this want of a home which makes me anxious to go with you. It is hard to be dependent upon the caprice of brothers, in one’s old age. Thirty years ago and life wore for me a very different aspect.”
“Nurse,” said Flora, who was very fond of the good old body, who had attended her with the greatest care and tenderness, through a long and dangerous illness; “how comes it that such a pretty woman as you must have been did not marry in your youth? I can scarcely imagine that nature ever meant you for an old maid.”
“Nature never made any woman to be an old maid,” said Nurse; “God does nothing in vain. Women were sent into the world to be wives and mothers; and there are very few who don’t entertain the hope of being so at some period of their lives. I should not be the forlorn, desolate creature I am to-day, if I had had a snug home, and a good husband to make the fireside cheery, and children together about my knees, and make me feel young again, while listening to their simple prattle.
“I thought to have been a happy wife once,” continued Nurse, sadly; “a heavy calamity that broke another heart besides mine, laid all my hopes in the dust, and banished from my mind the idea of marriage for ever. Did I never tell you the story, Ma’am? A few words will often contain the history of events that embittered a whole life. Whilst I am hemming this little pinafore for Miss Josey, I will tell you the tale of my early grief.
“My father was a native of this town, and captain of a small vessel employed in the coal-trade, which plied constantly between this port and Newcastle and Shields. He owned most of the shares in her, was reckoned an excellent sailor, and was so fortunate as to have escaped the usual dangers attendant upon the coast trade, never having been wrecked in his life,—which circumstance had won for him the nickname of ‘Lucky Billy,’ by which he was generally known in all the seaport towns along the coast.
“I was the eldest of a large family, and the only girl. My mother died when I was fourteen years of age, and all the cares of the household early devolved upon me; my father was very fond of me, and so proud of my good looks, that his ship was christened the Pretty Betsy, in honour of me.
“Father not only earned a comfortable living, but saved enough to build those two neat stone cottages on the East-cliff. We lived in the one which my brother now occupies; the other, which is divided from it by a narrow alley, into which the back doors of both open, was rented for many years by the widow of a revenue officer and her two sons.