Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/168

. 18, 1860.]

the Tagus to the Thames the Government sloop-of-war, Iocasta, had made a prosperous voyage, bearing that precious freight, a removed diplomatist and his family; for whose uses let a sufficient vindication be found in the exercise he affords our crews in the science of seamanship. She entered our noble river somewhat early on a fine July morning. Early as it was, two young people, who had nothing to do with the trimming or guiding of the vessel, stood on deck, and watched the double-shores beginning to embrace them more and more closely as they sailed onward. One, a young lady, very young in manner, wore a black felt hat with a floating scarlet feather, and was clad about the shoulders in a mantle of foreign style and pattern. The other you might have taken for a wandering Don, were such an object ever known; so simply he assumed the dusky sombrero and little dangling cloak, of which one fold was flung across his breast and drooped behind him. The line of an adolescent dark moustache ran along his lip, and only at intervals could you see that his eyes were blue and of the land he was nearing. For the youth was meditative, and held his head much down. The young lady, on the contrary, permitted an open inspection of her countenance, and seemed, for the moment at least, to be neither caring nor thinking of what kind of judgment would be passed on her. Her pretty nose was up, sniffing the still salt breeze with vivacious delight.

“Oh!” she cried, clapping her hands, “there goes a dear old English gull! How I have wished to see him! I haven’t seen one for two years and seven months. When I’m at home, I’ll leave my window open all night, just to hear the rooks, when they wake in the morning. There goes another dear old gull! I’m sure they’re not like foreign ones! Do you think they are?”

Without waiting for a reply, she tossed up her nose again, exclaiming:

“I’m sure I smell England nearer and nearer! Don’t you? I smell the fields, and the cows in them. I declare I’d have given anything to be a dairy-maid for half an hour! I used to lie and pant in that stifling air, among those stupid people, and wonder why anybody ever left England. Aren’t you glad to come back?”

This time the fair speaker lent her eyes to the question, and shut her lips: sweet, cold, chaste lips she had: a mouth that had not yet dreamed of kisses, and most honest eyes.

The young man felt that they were not to he satisfied by his own, and after seeking to fill them with a doleful look, which was immediately succeeded by one of superhuman indifference, he answered:

“Yes! We shall soon have to part!” and commenced tapping with his foot the cheerful martyr’s march.

Speech that has to be hauled from the depths usually betrays the effort. Listening an instant to catch the import of this cavernous gasp upon the brink of sound, the girl said:

“Part? what do you mean?”

Apparently it required a yet vaster effort to pronounce an explanation. The doleful look, the superhuman indifference were repeated in due order: sound, a little more distinct, uttered the words: