MILDRED’S INHERITANCE

As the good ship Majestic went steaming away from the Irish coast, one sunny September morning, three pretty college girls leaned over the railing of the upper deck, watching the steerage passengers below.  With faces turned to the shore which they might never see again, the lusty-throated emigrants were sending their song of “Farewell to Erin” floating mournfully back across the water.

“Oh, look at that poor old grandmother!” exclaimed one of the girls.  “There; that one sitting on a coil of rope with a shawl over her gray head.  The pitiful way she looks back to land would make me homesick, too, if I were not already on my way home, with all my family on board, and all the fun of the sophomore year ahead of me.  Let’s go down to the other end of the deck, where it is more cheerful.”

They moved away in friendly, schoolgirl fashion, arm in arm, intent only on finding as much enjoyment as possible in every moment of this ocean voyage.  A young English girl, dressed in deep mourning, who had been standing near them, followed them with a wistful glance; then she turned to look over the railing again at the old woman on the coil of rope.

“I wish that I could change places with her,” thought the girl.  “She is so old that she cannot have many homesick years in store, while I—­left alone in the world at seventeen, and maybe never to see dear old England again—­” The thought brought such an overwhelming sense of desolation that she could not control her tears.  Drawing her heavy black veil over her face, she hurriedly made her way to her deck-chair, and sank down to sob unseen, under cover of its protecting rugs and cushions.

This was the first time that Mildred Stanhope had ever been outside of the village where she was born.  The only child of an English clergyman, the walls of the rectory garden had been the boundary of her little world.  She could not remember her mother, but with her father for teacher, playmate, and constant companion, her life had been complete in its happiness.

If the violets blooming within the protecting walls of the old rectory garden had suddenly been torn up by the roots and thrown into the street, the change in their surroundings could have been no greater than that which came to Mildred in the first shock of her father’s death.  She had been like one in a confused dream ever since.  Some one had answered the letter from her mother’s brother in America, offering her a home.  Some one had engaged her passage, and an old friend of her father’s had taken her to Liverpool and put her on board the steamer.  Here she sat for the first three days, staring out at the sea, with eyes which saw nothing of its changing beauty, but always only a daisy-covered mound in a little churchyard.  All the happiness and hope that her life had, ended in that.

“Who is the pretty little English girl?” people asked when they passed her.  “She doesn’t seem to have an acquaintance on board.”