How long they had lived there!  The little china dog on the shelf was the same she used to play with on the floor before she could walk.  Dull and trite, and only too well known as these objects might be, a sentimental interest seemed now to hallow them.  Youth is selfish, and takes all affection as its due; but even the slight brush with the world Bluebell had already sustained, gave her the consciousness that, tired as she might be of her limited life at home, never need she expect to meet elsewhere such unselfish tenderness as a mother’s.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CROSSING THE HERRING POND.

A few short hours, the sun will rise
To give the morrow birth;
And I shall hail the main and skies,
But not my mother earth. 
—­Childe Harold.

The morning rose clear and brilliant.  The partings were over, and Bluebell, on the deck of the river steamer, was gazing her last on the long flat shore, with its high elevators, and waving adieu to the diminishing forms of Mrs. Leigh and Miss Opie, who had seen her on board,—­the latter with many injunctions to ascertain that two old-fashioned hirsute trunks containing her wardrobe were really put into the steamer at Quebec.  Bluebell had treated herself to a smart little portmanteau for the cabin, being rather ashamed of her antediluvian luggage.  She had ten sovereigns in her purse, that had been scraped together among them as a provision for any emergency.  The Rolleston children had sent her a travelling-bag; but not even a message came from Cecil, which saddened Bluebell, but did not make her resentful, for she could not but suspect that the former’s engagement to Bertie had come to an end, and that, in some way or other, she herself had been the cause of it.

A touch of frost during the last fortnight had worked a transformation on the foliage.  The thousand islands were changed from green bowers to the semblance of shrubberies of rhododendron, so brilliant were the crimson and red of their leaves.  They were associated in her mind with Cecil, whose artistic eye revelled in the autumn tints, and was perpetually painting and grouping them during the last fall.

It was rather lonely and monotonous in the river steamer.  There was no one on board that she knew, and, as each hour increased the distance from all familiar places, a feeling of friendlessness stole over her.

Arrived at Quebec, every one seemed to push before and jostle her away; but patiently following in the stream, she found herself, with a sensation of relief on board the huge Leviathan steamer that was to be her home across the broad Atlantic.

Some misgivings respecting luggage obtruded themselves.  A porter had put her portmanteau and bag on board, but the two trunks she had never seen.  No one seemed to attend to her till one man gruffly replied,—­“That if they were properly addressed, they would be put into the hold all right.”  And Bluebell took comfort in the remembrance of the labels plentifully nailed on by Aunt Jane, that she had then thought looked so nervously ridiculous.