e world before the
ship, and then made haste back again to the promenade of the Saguenay
boat. She sat leaning forward a little with her hands fallen into her
lap, letting her unmastered thoughts play as they would in memories and
hopes around the consciousness that she was the happiest girl in the
world, and blest beyond desire or desert. To have left home as she had
done, equipped for a single day at Niagara, and then to have come
adventurously on, by grace of her cousin's wardrobe, as it were, to
Montreal and Quebec; to be now going up the Saguenay, and finally to be
destined to return home by way of Boston and New York;--this was more
than any one human being had a right to; and, as she had written home to
the girls, she felt that her privileges ought to be divided up among all
the people of Eriecreek. She was very grateful to Colonel Ellison and
Fanny for affording her these advantages; but they being now out of
sight in pursuit of state-rooms, she was not thinking of them in
relation to her pleasure in the morning scene, but was rather regretting
the absence of a lady with whom they had travelled from Niagara, and to
whom she imagined she would that moment like to say something in praise
of the prospect. This lady was a Mrs. Basil March of Boston; and though
it was her wedding journey and her husband's presence ought to have
absorbed her, she and Miss Kitty had sworn a sisterhood, and were
pledged to see each other before long at Mrs. March's home in Boston. In
her absence, now, Kitty thought what a very charming person she was, and
wondered if all Boston people were really like her, so easy and friendly
and hearty. In her letter she had told the girls to tell her Uncle Jack
that he had not rated Boston people a bit too high, if she were to judge
from Mr. and Mrs. March, and that she was sure they would help her as
far as they could to carry out his instructions when she got to Boston.

These instructions were such as might seem preposterous if no more
particular statement in regard to her Uncle Jack were made, but will be
imaginable enough, I hope, when he is a little described. The Ellisons
were a West Virginia family who had wandered up into a corner of
Northwestern New York, because Dr. Ellison (unceremoniously known to
Kitty as Uncle Jack) was too much an abolitionist to live in a
slaveholding State with safety to himself or comfort to his neighbors.
Here his family of three boys and two girls had grown up, an