Part 3 (1/2)

”We ought to have hired somebody,” thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.

”I believe I've gone and caught a cold,” remarked Anna-Felicitas in her gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of bother with her eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the fact that she was sniffing.

Anna-Rose discreetly didn't look at her. Then she suddenly whipped out her handkerchief and waved it violently.

Anna-Felicitas forgot her eyes and nose and craned her head forward.

”Who are you waving to?” she asked, astonished.

”Good-bye!” cried Anna-Rose, waving, ”Good-bye! Good-bye!”

”Who? Where? Who are you talking to?” asked Anna-Felicitas. ”Has any one come to see us off?”

”Good-bye! Good-bye!” cried Anna-Rose.

The figures on the wharf were getting smaller, but not until they had faded into a blur did Anna-Rose leave off waving. Then she turned round and put her arm through Anna-Felicitas's and held on to her very tight for a minute.

”There wasn't anybody,” she said. ”Of course there wasn't. But do you suppose I was going to have us _looking_ like people who aren't seen off?”

And she drew Anna-Felicitas away to the chairs, and when they were safely in them and rolled up to their chins in the rug, she added, ”That man--” and then stopped. ”What man?”

”Standing just behind us--”

”Was there a man?” asked Anna-Felicitas, who never saw men any more than she, in her brief career at the hospital, had seen pails.

”Yes. Looking as if in another moment he'd be sorry for us,” said Anna-Rose.

”Sorry for us!” repeated Anna-Felicitas, roused to indignation.

”Yes. Did you ever?”

Anna-Felicitas said, with a great deal of energy while she put her handkerchief finally and sternly away, that she didn't ever; and after a pause Anna-Rose, remembering one of her many new responsibilities and anxieties--she had so many that sometimes for a time she didn't remember some of them--turned her head to Anna-Felicitas, and fixing a worried eye on her said, ”You won't go forgetting your Bible, will you, Anna F.?”

”My Bible?” repeated Anna-Felicitas, looking blank.

”Your German Bible. The bit about _wenn die bosen Buben locken, so folge sie nicht_.”

Anna-Felicitas continued to look blank, but Anna-Rose with a troubled brow said again, ”You won't go and forget that, will you, Anna F.?”

For Anna-Felicitas was very pretty. In most people's eyes she was very pretty, but in Anna-Rose's she was the most exquisite creature G.o.d had yet succeeded in turning out. Anna-Rose concealed this conviction from her. She wouldn't have told her for worlds. She considered it wouldn't have been at all good for her; and she had, up to this, and ever since they could both remember, jeered in a thoroughly sisterly fas.h.i.+on at her defects, concentrating particularly on her nose, on her leanness, and on the way, unless constantly reminded not to, she drooped.

But Anna-Rose secretly considered that the same nose that on her own face made no sort of a show at all, directly it got on to Anna-Felicitas's somehow was the dearest nose; and that her leanness was lovely,--the same sort of slender grace her mother had had in the days before the heart-breaking emaciation that was its last phase; and that her head was set so charmingly on her neck that when she drooped and forgot her father's constant injunction to sit up,--”For,” had said her father at monotonously regular intervals, ”a maiden should be as straight as a fir-tree,”--she only seemed to fall into even more attractive lines than when she didn't. And now that Anna-Rose alone had the charge of looking after this abstracted and so charming younger sister, she felt it her duty somehow to convey to her while tactfully avoiding putting ideas into the poor child's head which might make her conceited, that it behoved her to conduct herself with discretion.

But she found tact a ticklish thing, the most difficult thing of all to handle successfully; and on this occasion hers was so elaborate, and so carefully wrapped up in Scriptural language, and German Scripture at that, that Anna-Felicitas's slow mind didn't succeed in disentangling her meaning, and after a s.p.a.ce of staring at her with a mild inquiry in her eyes, she decided that perhaps she hadn't got one. She was much too polite though, to say so, and they sat in silence under the rug till the _St. Luke_ whistled and stopped, and Anna-Rose began hastily to make conversation about Christopher and Columbus.

She was ashamed of having shown so much of her woe at leaving England.

She hoped Anna-Felicitas hadn't noticed. She certainly wasn't going on like that. When the _St. Luke_ whistled, she was ashamed that it wasn't only Anna-Felicitas who jumped. And the amount of brightness she put into her voice when she told Anna-Felicitas it was pleasant to go and discover America was such that that young lady, who if slow was sure, said to herself, ”Poor little Anna-R., she's really taking it dreadfully to heart.”

The _St. Luke_ was only dropping anchor for the night in the Mersey, and would go on at daybreak. They gathered this from the talk of pa.s.sengers walking up and down the deck in twos and threes and pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing the chairs containing the silent figures with the round heads that might be either the heads of boys or of girls, and they were greatly relieved to think they wouldn't have to begin and be sea-sick for some hours yet. ”So couldn't we walk about a little?” suggested Anna-Felicitas, who was already stiff from sitting on the hard cane chair.

But Aunt Alice had told them that the thing to do on board a s.h.i.+p if they wished, as she was sure they did, not only to avoid being sick but also conspicuous, was to sit down in chairs the moment the s.h.i.+p got under way, and not move out of them till it stopped again. ”Or, at least, as rarely as possible,” amended Aunt Alice, who had never herself been further on a s.h.i.+p than to Calais, but recognized that it might be difficult to avoid moving sooner or later if it was New York you were going to. ”Two such young girls travelling alone should be seen as seldom as ever you can manage. Your Uncle is sending you second-cla.s.s for that very reason, because it is so much less conspicuous.”