there she sat until the captain came and hunted her up for supper.
She could not do anything of herself; she had to be initiated into
everything by some one else.

She was known on the boat only as "the little convent girl." Her name,
of course, was registered in the clerk's office, but on a steamboat no
one thinks of consulting the clerk's ledger. It is always the little
widow, the fat madam, the tall colonel, the parson, etc. The captain,
who pronounced by the letter, always called her the little _convent_
girl. She was the beau-ideal of the little convent girl. She never
raised her eyes except when spoken to. Of course she never spoke
first, even to the chambermaid, and when she did speak it was in the
wee, shy, furtive voice one might imagine a just-budding violet to
have; and she walked with such soft, easy, carefully calculated steps
that one naturally felt the penalties that must have secured
them--penalties dictated by a black code of deportment.

[Illustration: THE SISTERS BID HER GOOD-BY.]

She was dressed in deep mourning. Her black straw hat was trimmed with
stiff new crape, and her stiff new bombazine dress had crape collar
and cuffs. She wore her hair in two long plaits fastened around her
head tight and fast. Her hair had a strong inclination to curl, but
that had been taken out of it as austerely as the noise out of her
footfalls. Her hair was as black as her dress; her eyes, when one saw
them, seemed blacker than either, on account of the bluishness of the
white surrounding the pupil. Her eyelashes were almost as thick as the
black veil which the sisters had fastened around her hat with an extra
pin the very last thing before leaving. She had a round little face,
and a tiny pointed chin; her mouth was slightly protuberant from the