go to her mother.

The mother superior had arranged it all with the mother of the girl,
who was to come personally to the boat in New Orleans, and receive her
child from the captain, presenting a letter from the mother superior,
a facsimile of which the sisters gave the captain.

It is a long voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans, the rivers doing
their best to make it interminable, embroidering themselves _ad
libitum_ all over the country. Every five miles, and sometimes
oftener, the boat would stop to put off or take on freight, if not
both. The little convent girl, sitting in the cabin, had her
terrible frights at first from the hideous noises attendant on these
landings--the whistles, the ringings of the bells, the running to and
fro, the shouting. Every time she thought it was shipwreck, death,
judgment, purgatory; and her sins! her sins! She would drop her
crochet, and clutch her prayer-beads from her pocket, and relax the
constraint over her lips, which would go to rattling off prayers with
the velocity of a relaxed windlass. That was at first, before the
captain took to fetching her out in front to see the boat make a
landing. Then she got to liking it so much that she would stay all day
just where the captain put her, going inside only for her meals. She
forgot herself at times so much that she would draw her chair a little
closer to the railing, and put up her veil, actually, to see better.
No one ever usurped her place, quite in front, or intruded upon her
either with word or look; for every one learned to know her shyness,
and began to feel a personal interest in her, and all wanted the
little convent girl to see everything that she possibly could.

[Illustration: WATCHING A LANDING.]

And it was worth seeing--the balancing and _chasseeing_ and waltzing
of the cumbersome old boat to make a landing. It seemed to be
always attended with the difficulty and the improbability of a new
enterprise; and the relief when it did sidle up anywhere within
rope's-throw of the spot aimed at! And the roustabout throwing the
rope from the perilous end of the dangling gang-plank! And the
dangling roustabouts hanging like drops of water from it--dropping
sometimes twenty feet to the land, and not infrequently into the river
itself. And then what a rolling of barrels, and shouldering of sacks,
and singing of Jim Crow songs, and pacing of Jim Crow steps; and black
skins glistening through torn shirts, and white teeth gleamin