She sat twisting the plain gold circlet on her finger for a moment, and then added thoughtfully:  “In the light of her history America might well set that inscription over her own door:  ’God’s providence is mine inheritance.’  It would be none the less appropriate because it reaches back past the struggling colonists and past the Mayflower to find the roots of that faith in the mother country, in a little English town beside the Dee.

“No, my dear,” she exclaimed, looking up at Mildred; “it is not a land of strangers you are going to.  We sing ‘America’ and you sing ’God Save the Queen,’ and we both feel sometimes that there is a vast difference between the songs.  But they are set to the same tune, you know, and to alien ears, who cannot understand our tongue or our temperament, they must sound alike.”

Life seemed very different to Mildred when she went to her stateroom that night, and her cheery companion inspired her with so much hope before the voyage was over that she began to look forward to landing with some degree of interest.  How much of her new-found courage was due to the presence of her helpful counsellor Mildred did not realize until she came to the parting.  They were standing at the foot of the gangplank in the New York custom-house.

“I am sorry that I cannot stay to see you safe in your uncle’s care,” the lady said, “but my son tells me there is barely time to catch the next train to Boston.  Good-bye, my child.  If you get lonely and discouraged, think of the motto in my wedding-ring, and take it for your own.”

The next instant Mildred felt, with a terrible sinking of the heart, that she was all alone in the great, strange, new world.

Following the directions in her uncle’s letter, she pushed her way through the crowds until she came to the section marked “S,” where he was to meet her.  There was no one in sight who bore any resemblance to the description he had written of himself.  She stood there until her trunk was brought up, and then sat down on the battered little box to wait.

An hour went by, and she began to look around with frightened, nervous glances.  A half-hour more passed.  The crowds had diminished, for the officials were making their custom-house examinations as rapidly as possible.  All around her the sections were being emptied, and the baggage wheeled off in big trucks.  The newsboys and telegraph agents had all gone.  A great fear fell suddenly upon her that her uncle was never coming, and that she would soon be left entirely alone in this barnlike, cavernous custom-house, with its bare walls and dusty floors; and night was coming on, and she had nowhere to go.

She was groping in her pocket for a handkerchief to stop the tears that would come, despite her brave efforts to wink them back, when some one spoke to her.  It was the pretty college girl whom the others had called Muffit.

[Illustration:  “SAT DOWN ON THE BATTERED LITTLE BOX TO WAIT.”]