"Yes, this is Glory," said Parson Quayle. "She's leaving the old
grandfather at last, captain, and I'm over from Peel to set her off, you
see."

"Well, the young lady has got the world before her--at her feet, I ought
to say.--You're looking as bright and fresh as the morning, Miss Quayle."

The captain carried off his compliment with a breezy laugh, and went
along to the bridge. The girl had heard him only in a momentary flash of
consciousness, and she replied merely with a side glance and a smile.
Both eyes and ears, and every sense and every faculty, seemed occupied
with the scene before her.

It was a beautiful spring morning, not yet nine o'clock, but the sun
stood high over Douglas Head, and the sunlight was glancing in the
harbour from the little waves of the flowing tide. Oars were rattling up
the pier, passengers were trooping down the gangways, and the decks fore
and aft were becoming thronged.

"It's beautiful!" she was saying, not so much to her companions as to
herself, and the old parson was laughing at her bursts of rapture over
the commonplace scene, and dropping out in reply little driblets of
simple talk--sweet, pure nothings--the innocent babble as of a mountain
stream.

She was taller than the common, and had golden-red hair, and magnificent
dark-gray eyes of great size. One of her eyes had a brown spot, which
gave at the first glance the effect of a squint, at the next glance a
coquettish expression, and ever after a sense of tremendous power and