reckon, but still it's a fine city. Celebrated for its monuments, canvasbacks, and pretty girls, the saying used to be. Worn't dead stuck on canvasbacks myself, though; got overfed with them on my father's plantation when I was a lad, preferred bacon and greens any day in the year. But I'll give in to the praise of Baltimo women to my last breath. Married one of 'em, in fact, an' if God ever sent an angel into a man's life, 'twas she."

Miss Carstairs, to her surprise, detected simultaneously with a tender adoring look coming upon his withered face, a suspicion of moisture in her interlocutor's eyes. She sat up, felt that here was something so out of the way as to verge upon impropriety, made a movement to depart, and finally concluded to remain where she was.

"Yes, ma'am, she was too good for me, or any man. Born among the best, as the saying is, and I, one of the small potatoes in the heap. 'Tisn't any wonder I should be thinking of her to-day, the way she wanted all her life to go to Europe and never dreamed of managing to get there."

"I hope this thought won't spoil your own pleasure in the journey," Helen said, embarrassed to find an answer.

"Oh! no, ma'am, no chance of that. Why, she's been with me in spirit ever since we parted, ten years ago, an' I always feel as if she was sharing things. She'd need a good deal to make up to her for the hardships she had with me. You see, I was first leftenant of infantry, just come out o' the war, 'n 'bout as bare o' money as when I came into the world, I reckon, when I met her first off in Baltimo, where I was lookin' for a job. I was bred up as a drug clerk, and so was glad to take a place in a poor little store, 'n we began life together in one room of a boarding-house, 'n a hall bedroom at that! She, mind you, was a general's daughter of the real old Maryland first chop stock, but as poor as me. After her father was killed at Gettysburg, you see, her mother went to pickling for a living, 'n 'twas hard work, with two other daughters on her hands, neither one o' them likely to marry much, being the kind the Lord makes homely for reasons of His own. My wife, now, was a beauty, no mistaking her! I never understood how she came to take up with me, 'n when I asked her why, she said she was just tired o' pickles, anyway! That was only her fun, ma'am; we had to have a little, to make the wheels go round. Please excuse me for taking the liberty of talking so sociably. We Southerners have that way, I reckon, and, besides, it seemed like my heart was so full of wife to-day, I had to say something to somebody, or break a trace."

Miss Carstairs hesitated, then gave way to an unusual impulse, arising as she spoke.

"I must thank you, rather, for having reminded me that all men don't forget. I am sure you deserved all the happiness you had with her, and I hope there is a great deal of it still left in life for you."

"Well, now, ma'am, that's beautifully said. But I won't let you go without knowing that, though I've come to it by a long, hard way, my luck has turned at last, and the only trouble is that she's not here to share it. The long years after we moved south to Alabama (where I'd an opening, and after a while set up for myself), when wife toiled and moiled for me—when we lost all the children that were born to us, but the last one—how she used to sit in the evenings and read about English cathedrals and Stonehenge, and the like! She didn't seem to care so much about visiting Italy and Paris and the Riviera, but Switzerland tickled her awfully. She had a picture of Mont Blanc on top of a work-box. When I think how cheap the post cards are in these days, I do wish wife could have had a lot to paste in an album that she kept. She always said I was to take daughter, if we ever got money enough for two to cross on, and that she would stay at home. And now, the money's come, enough for all of us, and I'm taking daughter, just as she said, and we're to see England and she isn't! I tell you, ma'am, things are sorted out unevenly by our good Lord!"

Miss Carstairs carried into her cabin the wistfulness of the gentle old face, the irresistible conviction of his honesty. What, in the beginning, had tempted her to mock, now laid forcible hold of her better nature, and impelled her to gentler thoughts.

A sharp awakening was the rencounter with Miss Bleecker's apprehensions as to where she should sit at table, and the effervescence of that lady's regrets that the parties with whom she had counted upon being included, were all "made up." Helen recalled previous voyages under the ægis of her distinguished father, where their table was the one most desired by social pretenders, with its plats and wines served from his private stores, its aura of plutocratic exclusiveness in which revolved obsequious stewards! She winced at thought of glory fled, but while Miss Bleecker enlarged upon the neglect of the secretary, Foster, in not having arranged this matter for them, reflected bitterly that Foster, trimming his sails to the wind of Fortune, was now the devotée of the new Mrs. Carstairs' whims, and unless especially ordered so to do, would be likely to make no effort for the rebellious stepdaughter's advancement.

Affecting indifference to the detail in question, she found herself at dinner assigned to a small table in one corner of the saloon, of which five of the nine seats were already filled, when Miss Bleecker, sparkling intermittently in jet, sailed ahead of her charge, and motioned Helen into place beside her. A steward, who had identified the ladies, came hurrying to overtake them, and express his hope that Miss Carstairs would be satisfied with his selection for her, assuring her, in a whisper, that he had taken every care that she should have only the "best" people as her comrades.

Helen, who had not yet sat down, smiled at the reassuring promise. The whisper, overheard by two of the gentlemen unfolding their napkins opposite, produced an answering smile. Impossible to resist a voucher so bestowed! Simultaneously the two men arose and stood till Miss Carstairs had taken her revolving chair and was safely installed beside her chaperon. The table was now complete, save for the seat at the end and that at its right adjoining Helen's.

Soup had hardly been placed before them when the intended occupants of the vacant places resolved themselves into a couple, at sight of whom a cold tremor passed into Miss Carstairs' limbs—for they were none other than the mild little man with whom she had been talking on the deck, and the girl who had thrown John Glynn a flower!

The old fellow had made scant preparation for the ceremonial meal of the day on shipboard. His kind face shone with soap and water, while a thin lock of gray hair was laboriously trained by the same medium over his bald crown. His mustard-colored "tourist suit" of tweed, the red tie and rumpled cheviot shirt, might, indeed, have served a noble earl upon his travels through an American drawing-room; but whatever the appearance of her sire, it was at once lost to sight in the radiant prettiness and extraordinary self-possession of the girl who accompanied him.

A goddess of liberty in height, with the complexion of a pink-and-white balsam flower, and rippled hair of gold worn parted in the middle and extending outward in exaggerated wings; her admirable young form was attired in cheap China silk of an azure tint incorporating transparencies of white lace that revealed a dazzling neck and arms. Decked with profuse jewelry of the inexpensive sort, she stood for a moment where the rest of the company could fully profit by