Old ValentinesA Love Story
firelight, the smell of the sea, the full-rigged ship on a rude wall-bracket, and the moaning wind outside were memories of after years. At the moment, wrapped in a blanket, Phyllis was conscious only of security and warmth. She smiled up at the big fisherman who had rescued her, and made friendly advances to the cluster of ragged little ones who gathered around her, with scared faces and brown, bare legs and feet. When the fisherman's wife tucked her into a warm bed, she inquired sleepily for her mamma. A reassuring caress was the response: the language of motherhood is universal, and requires no words.

The patrol of the rocky inlet ended at dawn. When the burdened groups of booted men tramped past the cottage on their way to the inn, the fisherman's wife, peering through the window in the gray morning light, muttered to herself that both had been found.

Some hours afterward came the innkeeper and the postmaster, the one proud of his English, the other of his responsibilities as first citizen of the village. A large-eyed, terror-stricken Phyllis learned of her loneliness and sobbed on the good woman's broad bosom. The innkeeper and the postmaster smoked their pipes outside until the first outburst of childish grief had spent itself.

It appeared then that the little Miss must tell them to whom they should send a telegram. How painful and new to be obliged to think; how choking were the vague thoughts. But at last a ray of comfort; they should telegraph Farquharson, her dear, dear nurse. The name was slowly spelled. And the address? Perfectly, Phyllis knew the street and number of that fascinating home of hers, but she now remembered that Farquharson would not be there; that Farquharson had gone to visit her brother in a little town in the south of England; a little town of which Phyllis had heard the most wonderful, true stories; but she did not know its name. "Couldn't the telegraph find out?" she asked; and then, overcome with rushing thoughts, abandoned herself again to grief.

"There are Mr. Knowles, Mr. Leonard, and Mr. Singleton," she bethought her. "But they are painting in Algiers."

There was a lady her mamma called Molly, too, whom Phyllis liked very much, who came often to tea, accompanied by a tiny brown dog; but the patient innkeeper could learn no more of her than that mamma always called her Molly; the tiny brown dog's name, Phyllis remembered, was Tip.

How might this poor innkeeper's meager vocabulary convey the idea of relatives to Phyllis's mind? But 
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