FullReads

“I’m much obliged, miss, but I’d rather not I’d rather have your kind words than any money. It’s very lonesome I’ve been since I left Drogheda.”

She put the quarter back into her pocket with something like shame; then she fumbled her rings in a strange embarrassment. She had made a mess of it, she thought. At the same time she was glad the girl had so much pride.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Margaret Byrne.”

“You must let me help you in some way,” said Miss Thorne at last.

“I wonder what kind of people they are in New York, now,” said Margaret, looking at Sylvia wistfully. “It seems dreadful to go so far away and not know in whose house you’ll be livin’.”

Sylvia looked steadily at the girl, and then went away, promising to see her again. She smiled at Walter Kirk, who had finished his game of shuffleboard and was looking all up and down the deck for Miss Thorne. She did not stop to talk with him, however, but pushed on to where her mother and father were sitting not far from the taffrail.

“Mamma, I’ve been out in the steerage.”

“You’ll be in the maintop next, I don’t doubt,” said her father, laughing.

“I’ve been talking to the Irish girl that caught my hat yesterday.”

“You shouldn’t talk to steerage people,” said Mrs. Thorne. “They might have the smallpox, or they might not be proper people.”

“I suppose cabin passengers might have the smallpox too,” said Mr. Thorne, who liked to tease either wife or daughter.

“I offered the Irish girl a quarter, and she wouldn’t have it.”

“You’re too free with your money,” said her mother in a tone of complaint that was habitual.

“The girl wouldn’t impose on you, Sylvia,” said Mr. Thorne. “She’s honest. She knew that your hat wasn’t worth so much. Now, if you had said fifteen cents—-“

“O papa, be still,” and she put her hand over his mouth. “I want to propose something.”

“Going to adopt the Irish—-” But here Sylvia’s hand again arrested Mr. Thorne’s speech.

“No, I’m not going to adopt her, but I want mamma to take her for upstairs girl when we get home.”

Mr. Thorne made another effort to push away Sylvia’s hand so as to say something, but the romping girl smothered his speech into a gurgle.

“I couldn’t think of it. She’s got no references and no character.”

“Maybe she has got her character in her pocket, you don’t know,” broke out the father. “That’s where some girls carry their character till it’s worn out.”

“I’ll give her a character,” said Sylvia. “She is a lady, if she is a servant.”

“That’s just what I don’t want, Sylvia,” said Mrs. Thorne, with a plaintive inflection, “a ladylike servant.”

“Oh, well, we must try her. How’s the girl to get a character if nobody tries her? And she’s real splendid, I think, going off to get money to help her mother. And I’m sure she’s had some great sorrow or disappointment, you know. She’s got such a wistful look in her face, and when I spoke about Drogheda she said—-“

“There you are again!” exclaimed the father. “You’ll have a heroine to make your bed every morning. But you’d better keep your drawers locked for all that.”

“Now, I think that’s mean!” and the young girl tried to look stern. But the severity vanished when Mr. Kirk, of the senior class in Highland College, came up to inform Miss Thorne that the young people were about getting up a conundrum party. Miss Sylvia accepted the invitation to join in that diluted recreation, saying, as she departed, “Let’s try her anyway.”

“If she wants her I suppose I shall have to take her, but I wish she had more sense than to go to the steerage for a servant.”

“She could hardly find one in the cabin,” ventured Mr. Thorne.

So it happened that, on arrival in New York, Margaret Byrne was installed as second girl at the Thornes’. For in an American home the authority is often equitably divided–the mother has the name of ruling the household which the daughter actually governs.