confidence in Mary Nugent's wisdom and discretion, so the two friends
sat on the wall together, and Ursula poured out her heart. Poor
little girl! she was greatly discomfited at the vanishing of her
noble vision of the heroic self-devoted father, and ready on the
other hand to believe him a villain, like Bertram Risingham, or 'the
Pirate,' being possessed by this idea on account of his West Indian
voyages. At any rate, she was determined not to be accepted or
acknowledged without her mother, and was already rehearsing
magnanimous letters of refusal.

Miss Mary listened and wondered, feeling sometimes as if this were as
much a romance as the little yacht going down with the burning ship;
and then came back the recollection that there was a real fact that
Nuttie had a father, and that it was entirely uncertain what part he
might take, or what the girl might be called on to do. Considering
anxiously these bearings of the question, she scarcely heard what she
was required to assent to, in one of Nuttie's eager, 'Don't you think
so?'

'My dear Nuttie,' she said, rousing herself, 'what I do think is that
it will all probably turn out exactly contrariwise to our
imaginations, so I believe it would be wisest to build up as few
fancies as possible, but only to pray that you may have a right
judgment in all things, and have strength to do what is right,
whatever you may see that to be.'

'And of course that will be to stick by mother.'

'There can be little doubt of that, but the how? No, dear, do not
let us devise all sorts of _hows_ when we have nothing to go upon.