But without a thought or fear of anything like fate--only with some fluttering expectations, tremors, and hopes, Menie Laurie stood upon the steamer’s deck as it came to anchor slowly and cumbrously before the vociferous pier. In presence of all this din and commotion, a silence of abstraction and reverie wrapt her, and Menie looked up unconsciously upon the flitting panorama which moved before her dreamy eyes. Mrs Laurie’s brow had grown into curves of care again, and Jenny, jealous and alert, kept watch over the mountain of luggage which she had piled together by many a strenuous tug and lift--for Jenny already meditated kilting up her best gown round her waist, and throwing off her shawl to leave her sturdy arms unfettered, for the task of carrying some of these trunks and lighter boxes to the shore. “Keep me, what’s a’ the folk wanting yonder?” said Jenny; “they canna be a’ waiting for friends in the boat; and I reckon the captain durstna break the mail-bags open, so it canna be for letters. Eh, Miss Menie, just you look up there at that open in the houses--what an awfu’ crowd’s up in yon street! What’ll be ado! I’ve heard say there’s aye a great fire somegate in London, and folk aye troop to see a fire--but then they never happen but at night. My patience! what can it be?” Whatever it is, Menie’s eye has caught something less distant, which wakes up her dreaming face like a spell. While Jenny gazes and wonders at the thronging passengers of the distant street, Menie’s face floods over with a flush of ruddy light like the morning sky. Her shy eyelids droop a moment over the warm glow which sparkles under them--her lips move, breaking into a host of wavering smiles--her very figure, slight and elastic, expands with this thrill of sudden pleasure. Your mother there looks gravely at the shore--a strange, alien, unkindly place to her--and already anticipates, with some care and annoyance, the trouble of landing, and the delay and further fatigue to be encountered before her little family can reach their new home; and Jenny is uttering a child’s wonders and surmises by your side--what is this, Menie Laurie, that makes the vulgar pier a charmed spot to you?