men's shoes, and several of them with flowers in their unspeakable
hats and caps. There were no cabs or jaunting cars because we had
not been expected so early, and the jarveys were in attendance on
the Holyhead steamer. It was while I was searching for a piece of
lost luggage that I saw the stewardess assisting a young woman off
the gang plank, and leading her toward a pile of wool bags on the
dock. She sank helplessly on one of them, and leaned her head on
another. As the night had been one calculated to disturb the
physical equilibrium of a poor sailor, and the breakfast of a
character to discourage the stoutest stomach, I gave her a careless
thought of pity and speedily forgot her. Two trunks, a holdall, a
hatbox--in which reposed, in solitary grandeur, Francesca's picture
hat, intended for the further undoing of the Irish gentry--a guitar
case, two bags, three umbrellas; all were safe but Salemina's large
Vuitton trunk and my valise, which had been last seen at Edinburgh
station. Salemina returned to the boat, while Francesca and I
wended our way among the heaps of luggage, followed by crowds of
ragamuffins, who offered to run for a car, run for a cab, run for a
porter, carry our luggage up the street to the cab-stand, carry our
wraps, carry us, 'do any mortial thing for a penny, melady, an'
there is no cars here, melady, God bless me sowl, and that He be
good to us all if I'm tellin' you a word of a lie!'

Entirely unused to this flow of conversation, we were obliged to
stop every few seconds to recount our luggage and try to remember
what we were looking for. We all met finally, and I rescued
Salemina from the voluble thanks of an old woman to whom she had
thoughtlessly given a three-penny bit. This mother of a 'long wake
family' was wishing that Salemina might live to 'ate the hin' that
scratched over her grave, and invoking many other uncommon and