the tone of her companion had patronized and piqued her. She turned as
she spoke and looked up the sad, lonely river. The moon was making its
veiled face seen through the gray heaven, and touching the black stream
with hints of melancholy light. On either hand the uninhabitable shore
rose in desolate grandeur, friendless heights of rock with a thin
covering of pines seen in dim outline along their tops and deepening
into the solid dark of hollows and ravines upon their sides. The cry of
some wild bird struck through the silence of which the noise of the
steamer had grown to be a part, and echoed away to nothing. Then from
the saloon there came on a sudden the notes of a song; and Miss Ellison
led the way within, where most of the other passengers were grouped
about the piano. The English girl with the corn-colored hair sat, in
ravishing picture, at the instrument, and the commonish man and his very
plain wife were singing with heavenly sweetness together.

"Isn't it beautiful!" said Miss Ellison. "How nice it must be to be able
to do such things!"

"Yes? do you think so? It's rather public," answered her companion.

When the English people had ended, a grave, elderly Canadian gentleman
sat down to give what he believed a comic song, and sent everybody
disconsolate to bed.

"Well, Kitty?" cried Mrs. Ellison, shutting herself inside the young
lady's state-room a moment.

"Well, Fanny?"

"Isn't he handsome?"