"Good-bye, Angy, and God bless you! Be a good child, now, and don't fret," said my stepfather, stooping to gather me to him, and there was a break in his voice I had once before heard, when he found me with dead Stevie in my arms.
I can imagine what a piteous little object I must have looked, so frail and fair and small, standing alone on the big deck, without a hand to clasp, a fond smile to encourage me, lips to kiss away my tears. But he was too much of the careless, good-tempered Irishman to allow unpleasant emotions to trouble him except in a vague and transient way. Now I know how he would blink away the sad vision, and as he turned from me with a cheery "Don't fret," he waved his hand encouragingly, and his golden beard shone brightly in the subdued morning lights. He was a brave picture at all times, so smiling and handsome, and tall, and big, with the clearest blue eyes I have ever seen and the most winning of gestures.
I was straining to watch the last of him, forcing my passage through skirts and trousers, like an excited mouse, when a lady caught me up in her arms and held me while I frantically shook my handkerchief, and he to the last stood on the wharf, kissing his hand and waving his hat to me, as if I were a grown-up person. I was enchanted with his gallant air and fine courtesy, and flung him kisses with both hands. Then I buried my head in the lady's fur, and sobbed as if my heart would break.
Ireland was receding from me, the ship was rocking, there was a sullen deafening roar of steam, and I could no longer discern the one familiar figure I gazed for in the dim indistinguishable crowd on the thin, dark shoreline. The only world I knew was fading fast before my wet glance, and in terror of another I clasped the strange lady's neck, and shivered into her soothing furs.
A born traveller, the vagabond's instinct of forming pleasant friendships along the highroads that are buried with the last hand-shake showed itself on this my first voyage, and has never forsaken me throughout an accidented and varied career. I might have treasured sheaves of visiting-cards with names in every language bearing addresses in every possible town of Europe and Asia and numbers of American States. On this occasion no names or cards were exchanged between me and the lady with the sealskin coat. But she adopted me for the hours that passed until we reached Crewe, when I was ejected from the warm home of her lap, and cast out into the cold of a winter's night.