edes. The child's hair and eyes were getting darker,
but it was easy to see she would be a _blonde d'Espagne_. Jamie
secretly believed she had a strain of noble blood, though openly he
would not have granted such a thing's existence. We, with our wider
racial knowledge, might have recognized points that came from Gothic
Spain,--the deep eyes of starlight blue, so near to black, and hair
that was a brown with dust of gold. But her feet and hands were all of
Andalusia. Jamie had hardly spoken to a woman in his life,--he used to
think of himself as deformed. And now this little girl was all his
own!

So for a year or two the child was happy. Then came that day, never
to be forgotten by her, of the visit to old Mr. Bowdoin at Nahant.
They went down in a steamboat together,--two little Bowdoin girls,
younger than Mercedes, a boy, Harley, and a cousin, who was Dorothea
Dowse. At first Mercedes did not think much of the Bowdoin children;
they wore plain dresses, alike in color, while our heroine had on
every ribbon that was hers. They went down under care of Jamie
McMurtagh, dismissed at the wharf by Mr. James Bowdoin, who had a
stick of candy for each. Business was doing even then; but old Mr.
Bowdoin was not too busy to spend a summer's day at home with the
children. His favorite son, James, had married to his mind; and money
came so easy in those times!

Miss Dowse was fifteen, and she called her uncle's clerk Jamie; so
she elevated her look when she came to our Mercedes. She wore gloves,
and satin slippers with ribbons crossed at the ankle, and silk
stockings. Mercedes had no silk stockings and no gloves. Miss Dowse
had rejected the proffered stick of candy, and Mercedes sought a chance
to give hers away, one end unsucked. There was this boy in the
party,--Harleston Bowdoin,--so she made a favor of it and gave it to
him.

They were playing on the rail of the steamboat, and Jamie was sitting
respectfully apart inside. The little Bowdoin girls were sucking at
their candy contentedly; Mercedes was climbing with the Bowdoin boy
upon the rail, and he called his cousin Dolly to join them.

"I can't; the sun would make my hands so brown if I took off my
gloves," said that young lady. "Besides, it's so common, playing with
the passengers."

There was a double sting in this; for Mercedes was not just "a
passenger," but of their party. She walked into the cabin with what
dignity she could maintain, and then burst out weeping