strayling

Here and there a mother turned her head to call back anxiously for the bleating lambkin lost behind the white curtain; and, dim and grotesque, the awkward strayling would come gamboling into sight.

Virginia: the Old Dominion Cortelle Hutchins

In fact, Donna was an exemplified copy of that distinctive personality with which we unconsciously invest any young woman upon whose capable shoulders must fall such multifarious duties as those already described; particularly when, as in Donna's case, they are accepted and disposed of with the gentle, kindly, interested yet impersonal manner of one who loves her little world enough to be a very distinct part of it; yet, seeing it in its true light, manages to hold herself aloof from it; unconsciously conveying to one meeting her for the first time the impression that she was in San Pasqual on her own sufferance -- a sort of strayling from another world who had picked upon the lonely little desert town as the scene of her sphere of action for something of the same reason that prompts other people to collect postage stamps or rare butterflies.

The Long Chance 1918

And, oh, maiden! "added the queen, with benevolent warmth," steel not thy heart against her -- listen with ductile senses to her gentle ministry; and may God and His Son prosper that pious lady's counsel, so that it may win a new strayling to the Immortal Fold! "

Leila or, the Siege of Granada, Complete Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838