“My dear child, after the time that has passed, there is no imaginable chance of your meeting with your brother—and you wouldn’t know each other again if you did meet. Give up that vain hope and stay here with me. Be useful and be happy in your own country.”
“Useful?” Sydney repeated sadly. “Your own kind heart, Captain Bennydeck, is deceiving you. To be useful means, I suppose, to help others. Who will accept help from me?”
“I will, for one,” the Captain answered.
“You!”
“Yes. You can be of the greatest use to me—you shall hear how.”
He told her of the founding of his Home and of the good it had done. “You are the very person,” he resumed, “to be the good sister-friend that I want for my poor girls: you can say for them what they cannot always say to me for themselves.”
The tears rose in Sydney’s eyes. “It is hard to see such a prospect as that,” she said, “and to give it up as soon as it is seen.”
“Why give it up?”
“Because I am not fit for it. You are as good as a father to those lost daughters of yours. If you give them a sister-friend she ought to have set them a good example. Have I done that? Will they listen to a girl who is no better than themselves?”
“Gladly! Your sympathy will find its way to their hearts, because it is animated by something that they can all feel in common—something nearer and dearer to them than a sense of duty. You won’t consent, Sydney, for their sakes? Will you do what I ask of you, for my sake?”