L Allen Harker

Reproduction of the original: The Ffolliots of Redmarley by L. Allen Harker

Reproduction of the original: Jan and Her Job by L. Allen Harker

Reproduction of the original: Jan and Her Job by L. Allen Harker

Reproduction of the original: The Ffolliots of Redmarley by L. Allen Harker

SHE was something of a puzzle to the other passengers. They couldn't quite place her. She came on board the P. and O. at Marseilles. Being Christmas week the boat was not crowded, and she had a cabin to herself on the spar deck, so there was no "stable-companion" to find out anything about her. The sharp-eyed Australian lady, who sat opposite her at the Purser's table, decided that she was not married, or even engaged, as she wore no rings of any kind. Besides, her name, "Miss Janet Ross," figured in the dinner-list and was plainly painted on her deck-chair. At meals she sat beside the Purser, and seemed more or less under his wing. People at her table decided that she couldn't be going out as a governess or she would hardly be travelling first class, and yet she did not look of the sort who globe-trot all by themselves. Rather tall, slender without being thin, she moved well.

Just as a Royal Princess is known only by her Christian name, so "Miss Esperance" was known to her many friends by hers. It would have seemed an impertinence to add anything more: there was only one Miss Esperance, and even quite commonplace people, deficient in imagination and generally prosaic in their estimate of their acquaintance, acknowledged, perhaps unconsciously, that in Miss Esperance was to be found in marked degree "that hardy and high serenity," distinguishing quality of the truly great.

"There's others to be thought of as well as 'im," Mr Gallup remarked, mysteriously. "Who? More children?" asked Mrs Gallup. "I don't see as he'd need to be eloquent just to mind his little brother or sister." "Ellen Gallup, you listen to me. That babe lying there on your knee with a red face all puckered up is going to sway the multitude." Mrs Gallup gasped, and clutched her baby closer. "He's going to be one of those whose voice shall ring clarion-like"-here Mr Gallup unconsciously raised his own, and the baby stirred uneasily-"over"-he paused for a simile-he had been going to say "land and sea," but it didn't finish the sentence to his liking, "far and wide," he concluded, rather lamely. Mrs Gallup made no remark, so he continued: "Eloquent Gallup shall be a politician. Some day he'll stand for parlyment, and he'll get in, and when he's there he'll speak up and he'll speak out for the rights of his fellow men, and he'll proclaim their wrongs." And there and then, as if in vindication of his father's belief in him, the baby began to roar so lustily that further converse was impossible.