CHAPTER II.

THE LITTLE MAID.

NED and Norah very soon made friends with one another. There was a cheerful kindliness about the maimed sailor, that set the young girl at her ease.

"He seems so frank and pleasant," thought Norah, "and there's such a bright honest look in his eyes, that I'm sure I shall like him extremely."

"She's a trim little vessel," thought the sailor, "with a pretty figure-head of her own; but I wish that she carried a little less bunting, she'd look better without all those flowers."

Norah had indeed a sweet innocent face, but her dress was not such as beseemed her station in life—it showed an effort to look fine, which did not prevent it from looking shabby. The gay-coloured dress was stuck out by a hoop; the bonnet, which was rather an old one, was trimmed with some large half-faded pink flowers. To the simple-minded sailor it became the young maiden so ill that he was glad when it was taken off, and Norah's neatly braided hair appeared the sole ornament of her head.

But Mrs. Peele was not of the sailor's opinion. "My dear, what pretty flowers!" she exclaimed, taking up the bonnet in her hand, and turning it round to admire the trimming.

"Sophy Puller gave the flowers to me: was it not kind?" said Norah. "And she gave me this too," she added, pulling out of her dress a gaudy glass brooch, made to imitate diamonds and rubies.

Mrs. Peele was charmed with the brooch, and handed it over to Ned, who held it between his finger and thumb, looked at it for a moment, and then returned it in silence to its owner.

"Who is Sophy Puller?" asked he, thinking to himself, "I hope that the giver of that trumpery is not of a piece with her gift."

"She's a milliner's apprentice, and such a dear girl!" cried the artless Norah. "She often drops in to tea, and we have such famous gossips together over our bread and butter! It is so friendly and pleasant!"

"And do you get your mistress's leave to entertain this messmate?" inquired the sailor.

Nosh's smooth cheek flushed, and she looked a little embarrassed, as, without answering her uncle's question directly, she said, "I don't think there can be any harm."

"Harm indeed!" exclaimed Bessy Peele, warmly. "It would be hard indeed if a poor girl could not give a slice of bread and butter to a friend."

"At her mistress's expense," added Ned.

Norah appeared uneasy and confused, and turned her inquiring eyes on her uncle, as if he had suggested some painful doubt which had never before entered into her mind.

Mrs. Peele called away her attention.

"Let's see what you've brought in that parcel, my darling; it's never empty-handed as Norah comes to her mother!"

The parcel was carried to the window, and Ned Franks, who had no curiosity to know its contents, sat down again to his writing.

His ear was, however, soon caught by his sister's scornful exclamation, "Tea indeed! You don't mean to say that Mrs. Martin gives four shillings a pound for this powdery trash!"

"Bessy," said the sailor, looking up with a smile, "if the lady kindly sends you a present, don't you take it for better or worse?"

Again Norah looked at her uncle with that perplexed inquiring gaze, and seemed about to speak.

But her mother gave her a nudge, with a whisper, "Say nothing, he takes things so oddly."

Neither the nudge nor the words escaped the quick perception of Ned.

"Sunken rocks!" thought he. "I must sound that poor simple child as to how she came by that tea, if I chance to catch her alone."

Dan Peele soon came home from the fields, and his sharp cunning features were lighted up with such honest joy at sight of his sister, that Ned Franks said to himself, "There's a warm corner in the heart of that boy, I've judged the poor fellow hardly."

"I'm always so glad when you come home, Norah," cried Dan, almost dancing with glee, making the party laugh by adding, "then mother gives us such a thundering big pudding, and puts on the jam so thick."

Norah's presence indeed added not a little to the cheerfulness of the little circle at the family meal. She laughed and chatted gaily, and told many a little incident of her life with Mrs. Martin.

"Did I ever tell you, mother, of my first trying to read aloud to my mistress? The dear teacher at our school used to say that I read well—but wasn't I a bit frightened at the notion of having to read aloud in a drawing-room! I could hardly get up my courage when the bell rang, and I had to go up on purpose to read. There was the old lady in her big arm-chair, and the lamp with its shade on the table."

"'Take a seat, Norah,' said my mistress kindly, 'and go on with the work where I left off.'"

"'I'm glad it's to be sewing, not reading,' thought I. But wasn't I puzzled when not a bit of work could I see, nothing on the table but one old-looking book! I peeped about here and there, without daring to get up from my chair, wondering where the work could be hidden, while my mistress was wondering all the while why I did not begin."

"'What are you waiting for, Norah?' said she."

"'Please, ma'am, I can't find no work, I think it must have dropped under the table?'"

Norah's little story was duly laughed at, especially by Dan, who did not understand the joke, as he knew as little as his sister had done, that a book can be spoken of as "a work."

"Oh and another time I was so stupid!" Norah went on, laughing at the recollection. "I was reading to mistress a large new book, that had a good many pictures in it, when she dropped asleep as she sometimes does."

"When, just waking from her nap, 'Norah,' says she, 'I'd like to look at the plates.'"

"Up jumped I with a 'Yes, ma'am, directly; shall I bring the kitchen plates or the china?'"

Again there was a burst of merriment at the blunder of the little maiden.

"Do you like the reading, Norah?" asked Ned.

"Why, yes, sometimes," answered the lively young girl, "only the sermons are rather too long."

"Sermons!" exclaimed Dan and his mother in a breath; and the latter added, "I hope you get some other reading besides that."

"Oh, yes, history and travels; and then, you know, Sophy Puller lends me books to read by myself."

"What sort of books?" asked the sailor.

"Oh, delightful books!" exclaimed Norah. "I'm in the middle of one now, all about a dreadfully wicked woman who killed her husband, and I think she'll be hanged at the end—but she had great excuses you know."

"That must be jolly reading," cried Dan; but Ned Franks shook his curly head.

"I very much doubt that such reading is good for our little lass," observed he.

"Well, I own, it's very tiresome to have to leave off in the middle to sweep a room or cook a dinner," cried the girl, "but I sit up late at night to make up."

"I don't look on that Sophy Puller as your true friend," observed Ned Franks.

"Oh, don't say that—she is so kind: she wanted me to come out and spend the evening with her sometimes, when she has each fun, and dancing, and larking with her companions. I should have liked of all things to go; but when I asked mistress, she shook her head and said that she did not approve of young girls being out late at night."

"I say, wasn't that a shame?" exclaimed Dan.

"It's a hard thing that she should keep you so tight, and not let you have a bit of fun, when you're slaving all day," cried Bessy.

"A hard thing is it," said Ned Franks, "that the lady won't let your child go swimming amongst the sharks?"

"If I was you, Norah," cried Dan, "I'd slip off without leave after the old dame was abed; you said she shut up soon after eight."

"That's just what Sophy told me," said Norah.

"But you was afraid, I s'pose, of being caught," observed Dan.

"I was more afraid," replied Norah, simply, "that mistress might be taken ill in the night, and you know she depends upon me."

"God help that poor child, she's beset with snares," thought the one-armed sailor. "When she comes home she learns nothing but dishonesty, covetousness, and untruth; at her place there's an evil influence drawing her in like a whirlpool to folly, and may be to worse. And she so simple and artless. Simple and artless now, but if she have much to do with that Sophy Puller, it is not long that she'll keep so. I should like to drop in a word of warning, but I can't do it here, as Bessy is always driving on the opposite tack."

"Norah," he said aloud, "will you let me walk back with you in the evening?"

"I should be so glad to have you," cried the girl, "and then I need not hurry back so early. Mistress told me unless my brother or some one would see me home, I was not to stay out after sunset."

"A careful mistress," observed Ned.

"The cross old crab!" exclaimed his nephew, both speaking at the same moment.

"Oh, no, she's not cross," cried Norah. "My mistress is good, very good; I never knew any one like her but Mr. Curtis, our vicar, and my dear kind teacher at school."

"You'd like her a deal better, I guess, if she wasn't so strict," said Mrs. Peele.

"I don't know, I'm not quite sure of that," replied Norah, in a hesitating tone. "I should like Mrs. Martin to see more company, and to let me have a little more freedom, but she does not keep me in out of crossness. If you only knew how good she is to the poor, and how dearly she loves her Bible, and how patient she is when in pain, and she suffers a great, great deal, 'specially from her poor eyes, but she never murmurs at all!" The girl's face kindled with emotion as she spoke of her kind old mistress, and Ned watched it with a feeling of pleasure, while his heart warmed towards his young niece.

"Blessings on the child, they've not spoilt her yet," thought he. "She sees the light, and she's bearing towards it; shame is it that those nearest to her should try to turn her out of her course."