“Perhaps a servant of the hotel would help me,” she thought; and a call through the telephone brought to the door a tall, dark, Irish girl, who would have been pretty if her eyes and cheeks had not been stained with crying.  At first glance Angela was interested, for she was beginning to be happy, and could not bear to think that any one who came near her was miserable.  At all times, too, she had quick sympathies, and could read the secrets of sad or happy eyes in a flash, as she passed them in the street, though less sensitive persons saw nothing noteworthy; and often she longed to hurry back to some stranger, as if a voice had cried after her which she could not let cry in vain.  Now, as she talked to the maid about the unpacking, unspoken sympathy went out from her in a magnetic current which the Irish girl felt.  Her tear-blurred blue eyes fixed themselves on the young lady in black, and she had a strong, exciting impression that some blessing hovered near her, which she could take hold of if only she had courage.

“Indeed, miss, I’ll love to help you,” she said. “’Twill be a rale pleasure—­and not many comes my way, these days.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Angela told her.  “Perhaps you’re homesick.  I think you must have come not long ago from a green island which every one loves.”

“You’re right, miss.”  The Irish eyes brimmed over.  “And I’m homesick enough to die, but not so much fur Oireland, as fur a place I niver set eyes on.”

Angela was interested.  “You’re homesick for a place you never set eyes on?  Then some one you love must be there.”

This time the tears could not be kept back.  The young woman had begun her work of gathering up Angela’s belongings, and lest the tears should fall on a lace nightgown she was folding, she laid it on a chair, to search wildly for her handkerchief.  “Do excuse me, if ye can, miss,” she choked.  “I’ve no right to make a fool o’ meself in front of you, but you’re that kind, I got filled up like.  It’s the State of Oregon I’m thinkin’ of, for the man I crossed the say to marry is there, and now I don’t know when we shall ever see one another.”

“Oregon’s a long way off,” said Angela.  “I know that, though I’ve lived in Europe most of my life.  Only the other day I looked at it on the map.”

“Have ye got that map by you, miss?”

“Yes.  We’ll find it presently, in this mass of books in my cabin trunk.  But I was going to say, though Oregon’s ever so far West, the man you came from Ireland to marry will surely send for you.  Then how happy you’ll be, by and by.”

“A long by and by, I’m afraid, miss.”

“Oh, why?  Isn’t there money enough?” Angela began to plan how she might make the course of true love run smooth; though in these days she was not as rich as she had been.