The boys wouldn't go home until Mrs. Locke promised to bring us down again for June week. She promised, but I'm almost sure Barby won't let me go. The last thing Duffield did was to ask me again for that picture. "Please," he said in an undertone when he stooped to pick up my handkerchief. And he said it again in a meaning half-whisper as we shook hands all around in the general chorus of "Goodbye till June week."
CHAPTER XII
"SHOD GOES SURE"
June week has come and gone, but I was not there when the midshipmen went marching by in their white uniforms across the green mall, and the band played and parasols and summer dresses fluttered their gay colors from the Armory to the training ship.
Father wrote that he was coming, and would take me home with him if I didn't mind missing commencement. I did mind, terribly, but it was nothing when weighed in the balance with travelling back to the Cape with him and being with him a whole week.
So Babe and Lillian went without me, but it was some comfort afterward to hear that the boys all seemed disappointed because I wasn't there. They sent ever so many nice messages. Duffield sent me a Lucky Bag, the midshipmen's Annual, full of jokes about each other and some very attractive pictures both of the men and the buildings. There was a splendid one of him, and he drew a little sketch of Commodore Perry's flag on the margin, changing the motto to the words, "Won't give up the ship."
Babe brought back a Lucky Bag, too; Watson gave it to her. She also had a postal card of that old Indian figurehead, Tecumpseh. I believe Babe must have made some wish while running around it which came true, or else Watson gave her the postal. It surely must have some association for her, for she brought it back to Provincetown and has it now, framed in a carved ivory frame, the handsomest one in the house, and wholly unsuitable for an old wooden Indian. She keeps it on her side of the bureau, and Viola simply loathes it.
Father and I had a delightfully cosy visit on the way home. We stayed all night in Boston and came over on the boat. He has been under a frightful strain and shows it; looks so worn and tired and has ever so many more gray hairs than he had a year ago. He came right from the war zone, and twice has been on ships that had to go to the rescue of torpedoed vessels and pick up passengers adrift in life-boats.