“Poor girl,” Bessie said, pityingly, as she stretched out her hand and touched the bowed head, “I am so sorry for you.  Is your father old, and why did you leave him?”

At the sound of the sweet voice, so full of sympathy, the girl started quickly, and turning to Bessie, looked at her wonderingly; then, as if by some subtle intuition she recognized the difference there was between herself and the stranger whose beautiful face fascinated her so strongly, she said: 

“Oh, lady—­an’ sure you be a lady, even if you are here with the likes of me—­I had to lave me father, we was so poor and the taxes is so high, and the rint so big intirely, and the landlord a-threatenin’ of us to set us in the road any foine mornin’; and so I’m goin’ to Ameriky to take a place; me cousin left to be married, and if I does well—­an’ sure I’ll try me best—­I gets two pounds a month, and ivery penny I’ll save to bring the old father over.  But you cannot be going out to work, and have you left your father?”

“My father is dead, and mother, too,” Bessie answered, with a sob.  “I have left them both in their graves.  I am going out to work, but I have no place waiting for me like you, and I do not know of a friend in the world who can help me.”

“An’ faith, then, you can just count on me, Jennie Mahoney,” the impulsive Irish girl exclaimed, stretching out her hand to Bessie.  “You spoke kind like to me when me heart was fit to break, and it’s meself will stand by you and take care of ye, too, as if ye was the greatest lady in the land, as ye might be, for I knows very well that the likes of ye has nought to do with the likes of me; an’ if them spalpeens dares to come round a speerin’ at ye, it’s meself will shovel out their eyes with me nails.  I know ’em.  They are on every ship, and they are on this.  I heard one of ’em say when I come aboard, ’By Jove, Hank, that’s a neat Biddy, I think I’ll cultivate her.’  Cultivate me, indade!  I’ll Hank him.  Let him come anigh you or me, the bla’guard!”

Bessie had no definite idea what the girl meant by spalpeens and bla’guards, whose eyes she was to shovel out, but she remembered what Neil had said about her attracting the notice of the upper deck passengers, and resolved more fully than ever to keep herself from sight as much as possible.  She had a friend in Jennie, to whom she put numberless questions as to where she was going, and so forth.  But Jennie could not remember the name of the lady or place.  Her cousin, who had married lately, and lived in New York, was to tell her everything on her arrival.

“It is a good place,” she said, “and if it’s companion or the like of that ye are wishin’ to be, I’ll spake a good word to the lady, who, me cousin says, is mighty quare, but very good and kind when she takes a fancy.”

Bessie smiled as she thought of an offer of help coming from this poor girl, but she did not resent the offer.  On the contrary, she felt comforted because of it, and because of Jennie, whose faithfulness and devotion knew no stint or cessation during the next twenty-four hours, when it seemed to Bessie that she must die, both from the terrible sea-sickness and the close atmosphere of the cabin, where so many were congregated.