The next morning all the cabins on the boat looked as though a cyclone had struck them. The cabins belonging to the girls from Lakeview Hall were no exception.
“Bess, if we go on collecting things at this rate,” Nan protested to her friend, “we’ll have to buy new luggage. Nothing short of a huge trunk will hold everything.”
“I know it,” Bess laughed. “And it’s so hard to throw anything away.” She was holding favors from the costume ball of the night before in her hand. “I simply can’t part with these.”
The two girls were packing. It was very early in the morning, but the boat was due to make its first stop shortly, and they wanted to be on deck when land was sighted. “I can’t part with these either,” Nan held up the limp bags of a half dozen balloons. “A handsome army officer got them for me last night, by climbing up on a chair and pulling them by their strings down from the ceiling.”
“Wasn’t the ballroom lovely, though?” Bess paused in her packing, while she remembered the lights and the palms and the balloons and the other decorations. Then she recalled all the people in fancy costume marching around, dancing and singing.
“The nicest thing of all,” Nan paused in her packing too, “was that glass promenade through which you could see the stars and the sky overhead. The moon was so big and full that no other lights were needed. I shall never forget it—nor that quartet of sailors that sang all those funny old sea ballads and then danced the hornpipe.”
The girls laughed together at the recollection, and then busied themselves in earnest. Nan kept the balloons for a couple of children back in Tillbury whose idol she was. Bess kept the favors, because she couldn’t bear to throw them away.
Again and again, the ship’s foghorn blasted the early morning quietness. “I’m sure we must be almost in sight of land.” Bess hurried faster.
“But the steward promised,” Nan protested, “that he would tell us so that we would be up on deck when land was sighted.”
“You don’t suppose he has forgotten?” Bess questioned.