With curiosity and pleasure Minnie surveyed the scene around her. The deck piled with luggage, the funnel black with smoke, the compass in its little glass frame, the pilot at the wheel, the hurrying to and fro, the sailors busy with the rope, and outside the vessel the view of the river crowded with shipping—boats, steamers, and barges; all afforded intense amusement to the light-hearted, intelligent child, who was full of eager questionings about each new object that caught the eye. "Oh, mamma! What a noise the steam makes! I can hardly hear myself speak. I wish that the vessel would begin to move; but I can't think how it will ever make its way through such a crowd of boats! What a number of passengers there are; and, oh! What a lot of carpetbags and boxes! I don't think that any more people can be coming; the sailors had better pull up the plank that joins us to the shore, and let us be off at once. Oh! no; there are some more people arriving. Such a grand gentleman and lady, mamma! And a little girl so splendidly dressed! They had better make haste and get on deck, or the vessel will move off without them." As Minnie concluded her sentence, a stout man passed along the plank, followed by his wife and daughter. The child wore a pink frock, and pea-green silk tippet, and a quantity of light curls streamed on her shoulders from a hat adorned with a long drooping feather. While Minnie surveyed the girl's finery with admiration approaching to envy, Mrs. Mayne glanced at the mother with an impression that that face was familiar to her, though she could not for some time recollect where she had seen it before. While the woman was bustling about her baggage, and in a loud voice disputing with the porter about his dues, the lady recalled to memory that the person before her was Mrs. Lowe, a greengrocer's wife, who had provided Mrs. Mayne's mother with vegetables nearly ten years previous. Mrs. Mayne recollected also the circumstances under which her family had given up employing the Lowes. The ladies had in vain tried to persuade the greengrocer to close his shop on Sundays; his wife had even been insolent when the duty of obeying the third commandment had been pressed home on her conscience, and had thus lost her customers, as well as her temper. Mrs. Mayne was not sure whether the greengrocer's wife now recognized her, but felt sorry that such a person was to be her companion on the voyage to Scotland. "She looks as though her business had prospered," thought the lady, "to judge by her comfortable appearance and dress; and she has decked out her poor child in finery purchased by her ill-gotten gains. But how impossible it is to tell who is happy by mere outside show! However, those who wilfully break God's laws may appear to prosper, yet in the end it shall be seen that 'the blessing of the Lord it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it.'"