CHAPTER XXI
WELCOME, LASSIES, TO SCOTLAND
Dr. Beulah’s question went unanswered. The clank of the chain as deckhands dropped the gang-plank from ship to shore attracted the attention of the girls even as she asked it. Now they moved forward slowly, with the rest of the passengers.
“We’re almost there! We’re almost there!” Bess could hardly contain herself. “Now we are getting nearer and nearer and nearer. One more step. Two more steps. We made it!” she exclaimed triumphantly as she stepped her foot on the gangplank and carefully walked its length. Nan was at her heels. Then one by one the others disentangled themselves from the crowded deck and joined those on shore, until they all stood together, “like a group of lost baffled children,” Dr. Prescott said, as she joined them and herded them through a door and into a long shed-like station.
There, everything seemed in confusion. “It’s like the Grand Central Station in New York and the dock where we boarded the ship all rolled into one,” Laura whispered into Nan’s ear.
“Yes, only you don’t see kilted highlanders and bagpipes and English officers in either of those places,” Nan returned, waving and smiling across the top of somebody’s bags to Hetty, who had attracted her attention from the distance.
“Welcome, lassies, to Scotland.” A voice from behind them caused them to turn and there was Jeanie. “Ha’ ye learned your way aboot yet?” she grinned at her American friends.
“We’re no so guid as that.” Nan recalled as best she could her own mother’s Scotch dialect, but let it go again as she called after Jeanie, “Remember, it’s tea in London during coronation week.”
“Aye, and I’ll not be forgettin’,” Jeanie flung over her shoulder before she was lost in the crowd of English, Irish and Scotch people.