Ladies-In-Waiting

Excerpt

MISS THOMASINA TUCKER

I

“Good-bye, Miss Tucker!”

“Good luck, Miss Tommy!”

“Bye, bye, Tomsie!”

“Don’t stay away too long!”

These sentiments were being called from the Hoboken dock to the deck of an ocean steamer, while a young lady, buried in bouquets and bonbons, leaned over the rail, sparkling, inciting, compelling, responding.

“Take care of yourself, Tommy!”

“I don’t see but that I must! Nobody else to do it!” she responded saucily.

“You wouldn’t let ’em if they tried!” This from a rosy-cheeked youngster who was as close to the water’s edge as safety permitted. “Say, did you guess what my floral offering was to be when you trimmed your hat? I am flattered!”

“Sorry! The hat was trimmed weeks ago, and I’m wearing your bouquet because it matches.”

“Thanks, awfully,” replied the crestfallen youth. “Plans for reduction of head-size constantly on file in Miss Tucker’s office.”

“Just Carl’s luck to hit on a match.”

“Don’t see any particular luck in being accessory to a hat trimming,” grumbled Carl.

“Write now and then, Miss Tommy, won’t you?” said a fellow with eyeglasses and an air of fashion.

“Won’t promise! I’ll wait till I’m rich enough to cable!”

“Shilling a word’s expensive, but you can send ’em to me collect. My word is ‘Hopeful,’”—at which the little party laughed.

“Register another, and make it ‘Uncertain,’” called the girl roguishly, seeing that no one was paying any attention to her friends and their nonsense.

“London first, is it?” asked the rosy youth. “Decided on your hotel?”

“Hotel? It’s going to be my share of a modest Bloomsbury lodging,” she answered. “Got to sing my way from a third-floor-back in a side street to a gorgeous suite at the Ritz!”

“We’ll watch you!” cried three in chorus.

“But we’d rather hear you, darling,” said a nice, tailor-made girl, whose puffy eyelids looked as if she had been crying.

“Blessed lamb! I hope I’ll be better worth hearing! Oh, do go home, all of you; especially you, Jessie! My courage is oozing out at the heels of my shoes. Disappear! I’ve been farewelling actively for an hour and casually for a week. If they don’t take off the gangplank in a minute or two I shan’t have pluck enough to stick to the ship.”

“You can’t expect us to brace you up, Tommy,” said the rosy youth. “We’re losing too much by it. Come along back! What’s the matter with America?”

“Don’t talk to her that way, Carl,”—and the tailor-made girl looked at him reproachfully. “You know she’s got nobody and nothing to come back to. She’s given up her room. She’s quarreled with her beastly uncle at last; all her belongings are in the hold of the steamer, and she’s made up her mind.”

“All ashore that’s going ashore!” The clarion tones of the steward rang through the air for the third time, and the loud beating of the ship’s gong showed that the last moment had come. The gangplank was removed and the great liner pushed off and slowly wended her way down-river, some of the more faithful ones in the crowd waving handkerchiefs until she was a blur in the distance....