l of the Yorkes, and on her return from her first visit to them.
"Why, she does look so nice; just as nice as mammy in her Sunday
clothes. She looks almost lady."

"Yes, she does, and it don't make any dif'ence, if she _behaves_ lady,"
said Daisy; "and I fink she always behaves _very_ lady. Mamma," with a
sudden and startling change of subject, "if somebody told you you could
do somefing to help somebody, oughtn't you to do it?"

"Yes, my darling, if you can," answered mother, rather oblivious, to
tell the truth, of the child's earnestness in putting the question; for
she was at the moment writing an answer to a note which had been just
brought in.

"And it's very nice to do the kind fing, and not speak about it, isn't
it?" questioned Daisy.

"Very, dear," answered mother, still only half hearing the little one,
and far from thinking that she was supposed to be giving her sanction
to a most unheard of proceeding.

Mrs. Yorke's attire and general appearance proved satisfactory even to
fastidious Miss Allie and myself; indeed, she would have passed muster
among any hundred elderly women of the respectable middle class; and
there was nothing whatever about her to attract special attention,
unless one turned again for a second look at the kind, motherly old
face. There was a sort of natural refinement about her, too, which made
her adapt herself with some ease to her unaccustomed surroundings.

As for the captain, he was a hopeless subject for those who had an eye
to fashion or the commonplace. No amount of attempts at smoothing or
trimming him down, no efforts at personal adornment in his case, could
make of him any thing but what he was, here in the great city, as well
as at his seaside home, the typical old sea-faring man, rough, hearty,
simple, and good-natured, garrulous to excess, as we had often proved,
and not to be polished, or made what he called "cityfied."

"'Tain't no sort of use whitewashin' the old hulk," he asserted; "an' I
guess my Sunday clo's, as is good enough for the Lord's meetin'-house
up to the Pint, is got to be good enough for these messed-up city
streets; an' ye can't make no bricky-bracky outer me."

To the boys he was a source of unmixed delight, both to our own young
brothers, and to the two servant-lads; and no care for the eyes or
comments of the world troubled any one of them when he happened to be
under their escort. And little Daisy was equally independent, or
perhaps too innocent