Honey-Sweet

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

Anne and her uncle were standing side by side on the deck of the steamship Caronia due to sail in an hour. Both had their eyes fixed on the dock below. Anne was looking at everything with eager interest. Her uncle, with as intent a gaze, seemed watching for something that he did not see. Presently he laid his hand on Anne's shoulder.

"I'm going to walk about, Nancy pet," he said. "There's your chair and your rug. If you get tired, go to your stateroom—where your bag is, you know."

"Yes, uncle." Anne threw him a kiss as he strode away.

She felt sure she could never tire of that busy, changing scene. It was like a moving-picture show, where one group chased away another. Swift-footed stewards and stewardesses moved busily to and fro. In twos and threes and larger groups, people were saying good-bys, some laughing, some tearful. Messenger boys were delivering letters and parcels. Oncoming passengers were jostling one another. Porters with armfuls of bags and bundles were getting in and out of the way. Trunks and boxes were being lowered into the hold. Anne tried to find her own small trunk. There it was. No! it was that—or was it the one below? Dear me! How many just-alike brown canvas trunks were there in the world? And how many people! These must be the people that on other days thronged the up-town streets. Broadway, she thought, must look lonesome to-day.

Every minute increased the crowd and the confusion.

There came a tall, raw-boned man with two heavy travelling bags, following a stout woman dressed in rustling purple-red silk. She spoke in a shrill voice: "Sure all my trunks are here? The little black one? And the box? And you got the extra steamer rug? Ed-ward! And I dis-tinct-ly told you—"

"The very best possible. Positively the most satisfactory arrangements ever made for a party our size." This a brisk little man with a smile-wrinkled face was saying to several women trotting behind him, each wearing blue or black serge, each lugging a suit-case.

A porter was wheeling an invalid chair toward the gang-plank. By its side walked a gentlewoman whom fanciful little Anne likened to a partridge. In fact, with her bright eyes and quick movements, she was not unlike a plump, brown-coated bird.

She fluttered toward the chair and said in a sweet, chirpy voice: "Comfortable, Emily? Lean a little forward and let me put this pillow under your shoulders. There, dear! That's better, I'm sure. Just a little while longer. How nicely you are standing the journey!"

A man in rough clothes stopped to exchange parting words with a youth in paint-splotched overalls.

—"Take it kind ye're here to see me off. I been a saying to mesilf four year I'd get back to see the folks in the ould counthry. And here I am at last wid me trunk in me hand—" holding out a bulging canvas bag. "Maybe so I'll bring more luggage back. There's a tidy girl I used to know—"

Beyond this man, Anne's roving eyes caught a glimpse of a familiar, gray-clad figure. She waved her hand eagerly but it attracted no greeting in return....