w one object and now another, the gossips would say the child
was longing for something, and Miss Roxy would still further venture to
predict that that child always would long and never would know exactly
what she was after.

That dignitary sits at this minute enthroned in the kitchen corner,
looking majestically over the press-board on her knee, where she is
pressing the next year's Sunday vest of Zephaniah Pennel. As she makes
her heavy tailor's goose squeak on the work, her eyes follow the little
delicate fairy form which trips about the kitchen, busily and silently
arranging a little grotto of gold and silver shells and seaweed. The
child sings to herself as she works in a low chant, like the prattle of
a brook, but ever and anon she rests her little arms on a chair and
looks through the open kitchen-door far, far off where the horizon line
of the blue sea dissolves in the blue sky.

"See that child now, Roxy," said Miss Ruey, who sat stitching beside
her; "do look at her eyes. She's as handsome as a pictur', but 't ain't
an ordinary look she has neither; she seems a contented little thing;
but what makes her eyes always look so kind o' wishful?"

"Wa'n't her mother always a-longin' and a-lookin' to sea, and watchin'
the ships, afore she was born?" said Miss Roxy; "and didn't her heart
break afore she was born? Babies like that is marked always. They don't
know what ails 'em, nor nobody."

"It's her mother she's after," said Miss Ruey.

"The Lord only knows," said Miss Roxy; "but them kind o' children always
seem homesick to go back where they come from. They're mostly grave and
old-fashioned like this 'un. If they gets past seven years, why they
live; but it's always in 'em to long; they don't seem to be really
unhappy neither, but if anything's ever the matter with 'em, it seems a
great deal easier for 'em to die than to live. Some say it's the mothers
longin' after 'em makes 'em feel so, and some say it's them longin'
after their mothers; but dear knows, Ruey, what anything is or what
makes anything. Children's mysterious, that's my mind."

"Mara, dear," said Miss Ruey, interrupting the child's steady lookout,
"what you thinking of?"

"Me want somefin'," said the little one.

"That's what she's always sayin'," said Miss Roxy.

"Me want somebody to pay wis'," continued the little one.

"Want somebody to play with," said old Dame Pennel, as she came in from
the back-room with her hands yet floury with kn