The party remained on deck while the freight was being run aboard below. Beth’s glance often swept the littered dock as she talked gaily to her friends or to the children or to her mother and father. Suddenly her eyes fixed their gaze upon a tall figure striding down to the dock from Water Street.
It was Larry. Beth’s heart leaped and the color came and went in her cheeks. Had there not been so much going on, her excitement must have been noticed. As it happened, however, not even the girls chanced to see Larry till he was aboard the boat and was approaching the group.
By that time Beth had quite regained her self-control. She welcomed Larry with just the degree of warmth her mother displayed—by no means as joyfully as did Mary Devine. He had to be introduced to the other girls—re-introduced in some cases. With Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin he was delightfully cordial. The children—even the twins—welcomed Larry nicely. Nothing was said about his previous neglect.
When the warning whistle sounded and the party arose to leave, Larry manoeuvered to get Beth by herself for a moment. They took the outer deck on one side of the glass-enclosed cabin, while the rest of the party went the other way to the stair-well.
“Go to it, Beth. I glory in your resolve,” Larry said, in reference to her plunge into boarding-school life. “Get all there is for you at Rivercliff.”
“I mean to, Larry,” she said composedly. “And thank you for the flowers—they are beautiful.”
“Oh, they were the Mater’s idea,” he said hurriedly. “But I have something here——”
He fumbled in his pocket and brought forth a little box—a jeweler’s box, Beth knew.
“You won’t want to wear those jolly old corals that belonged to your Great-grandmother Lomis at every party you go to up there,” Larry said, more boyish in his confusion than ever, Beth thought. “Here’s something you can wear right along—to remember me by.”
He thrust the box into her hand. The children came racing to join them. Beth hid the box quickly in her bag—she knew not why.