JUPITER LIGHTS

BY

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

AUTHOR OF “ANNE” “EAST ANGELS” “FOR THE MAJOR” ETC.

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1889

Copyright, 1889, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
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All rights reserved.

Contents

JUPITER LIGHTS.

I.

“IT’S extraordinary navigation, certainly,” said Miss Bruce.

“Oh, mem, if you please, isn’t it better than the hother?” answered Meadows, respectfully.

Meadows was Miss Bruce’s maid; one could have told that she was English (even if one had not heard her speak) from her fresh, rosy complexion, her smooth hair put plainly and primly back from her forehead, her stiff-backed figure with its elbows out, and her large, thick-soled boots.

“I don’t mind being ’umped-up on the bank, miss, if you please,” she went on in her sweet voice, dropping her h’s (and adding them, too) in unexpected places. “It’s those great waves we ’ad last week, mem, if you please, that seemed so horful.”

“I am sorry you will have to see them again so soon,” Miss Bruce answered, kindly.

For Meadows was to return to England immediately; she was accompanying the American lady for the journey only. Miss Bruce was not rich; in her own land she did not intend to give herself the luxury of a lady’s-maid—an indulgence more unusual in the great Republic (at least the northern half of it) than fine clothes, finer houses, or the finest diamonds.

The little steamboat which carried these travellers was aground in a green plain, a grassy, reedy prairie, which extended unbroken as far as the eye could reach on all sides save one; here there was, at some distance, a bank or shore of dark land, dark in comparison with the green. Beyond this shore—and one could easily see over it—stretched the sea, “the real sea,” as Miss Bruce called it, “and not all this grass!” It was this remark of hers which had drawn out the protest of poor Meadows.

Miss Bruce had crossed from England to New York; she