"There! there, darling! Don't take it so hard," she said, tenderly caressing the fair head lying in her lap. "They'll not stop now till we are off Queenstown, when there will be a chance to go back if you like, but I don't think you will. America is better than Wales. You will be happy there."
Bessie did not think she should ever be happy again, but with her usual sweet unselfishness, and thoughtfulness for others, she tried to dry her tears, so as not to distress her companion, and when the latter suggested that she go out and look at the docks of Liverpool and the shores as they passed, she pulled up her hood and tied on her vail, and with her back to anyone who might see her from the upper deck, where the first-class passengers were congregated, she stood gazing at the land she was leaving, until a chilly sensation in her bones and the violent pain in her head sent her to her berth, which she did not leave again for three days and more.
She knew when they stopped at Queenstown, and was glad for a little respite from the rolling motion, which nearly drove her wild and made her so deadly sick. But she did not see the tug when it came out laden with Irish emigrants, of whom there was a large number. Of these the young girls and single women were sent to the rear of the ship, where Bessie lay, half unconscious of what was passing around her, until she heard the sound of suppressed weeping, so close to her that it seemed almost in her ear.
Opening her eyes, she saw a young girl sitting on the floor, with her head upon the berth next to her own, sobbing convulsively and whispering to herself: "Oh, me father, me father; me heart is breaking for you. What'll ye do without yer Jennie, when the nights are dark and long. Oh, me poor old father, I wish I had niver come. We might have starved together."
"Poor girl," Bessie said, pityingly, as she stretched out her hand and touched the bowed head, "I am so sorry for you. Is your father old, and why did you leave him?"
At the sound of the sweet voice, so full of sympathy, the girl started quickly, and turning to Bessie, looked at her wonderingly; then, as if by some subtle intuition she recognized the difference there was between herself and the stranger whose beautiful face fascinated her so strongly, she said: "Oh, lady--an' sure you be a lady, even if you are here with the likes of me--I had to lave me father, we was so poor and the taxes is so high, and the rint so big intirely, and the landlord a-threatenin' of us to set us in the road any foine mornin'; and so I'm goin' to Ameriky to take a place; me cousin left to be married, and if I does well--an' sure I'll try me best--I gets two pounds a month, and ivery penny I'll save to bring the old father over. But you cannot be going out to work, and have you left your father?"