the trimming or guiding of the vessel, stood on deck, and watched the
double-shore, beginning to embrace them more and more closely as they
sailed onward. One, a young lady, very young in manner, wore a black
felt hat with a floating scarlet feather, and was clad about the
shoulders in a mantle of foreign style and pattern. The other you might
have taken for a wandering Don, were such an object ever known; so simply
he assumed the dusky sombrero and dangling cloak, of which one fold was
flung across his breast and drooped behind him. The line of an
adolescent dark moustache ran along his lip, and only at intervals could
you see that his eyes were blue and of the land he was nearing. For the
youth was meditative, and held his head much down. The young lady, on
the contrary, permitted an open inspection of her countenance, and
seemed, for the moment at least, to be neither caring nor thinking of
what kind of judgement would be passed on her. Her pretty nose was up,
sniffing the still salt breeze with vivacious delight.

'Oh!' she cried, clapping her hands, 'there goes a dear old English gull!
How I have wished to see him! I haven't seen one for two years and seven
months. When I 'm at home, I 'll leave my window open all night, just to
hear the rooks, when they wake in the morning. There goes another!'

She tossed up her nose again, exclaiming:

'I 'm sure I smell England nearer and nearer! I smell the fields, and
the cows in them. I'd have given anything to be a dairy-maid for half an
hour! I used to lie and pant in that stifling air among those stupid
people, and wonder why anybody ever left England. Aren't you glad to
come back?'

This time the fair speaker lent her eyes to the question, and shut her