"Bless her heart!" cried Jess. "I'm just the gladdest girl that ever was because she could go and is getting on so well. Do you know, I believe she'd have died pretty soon if she'd kept on as she was the last of the winter! I felt perfectly certain then, that she wasn't going to live, though I never told a soul! I was absolutely in despair about her!"
"Same here!" echoed Bess. "I was going through some mental tortures, too, but I wasn't bothering any one else with them! Corinne and her father just saved Margaret's life, I believe. But here's something queer in her letter! I just came to it. She ends by saying:
"'We have two surprises for you, but you are not to know a thing about them till we get home! Oh, I can just see you wiggling with impatience to know what they are! But it's useless for you to beg; not a word will we whisper till we land in America!'
"Now what do you make of that?" demanded the bewildered Bess.
The day came at last, when the travelers were expected to land once more on their native shores. To the twins it had seemed an interminable age—the more so since the intended absence of a month had lengthened itself to ten long weeks. It had taken longer to restore Mr. Cameron's health than he had imagined, and, besides, Margaret had improved so perceptibly that they decided to stretch the time of the trip to the limit.
They had sailed away on a stormy day in March. They were expected back on the rarest kind of a day in June, and the entire Charlton Street household was assembled at the pier to meet the incoming steamer. This had been the request of Mr. Cameron himself, who had written to Mrs. Bronson that, for a sufficient reason, he wished every one of them to be there, including Sarah.
It was four o'clock on a golden afternoon when the Bermudian came steaming slowly up the river, picking her stately course among the heavy ferry-boats and darting tugs that blocked the way. Alexander, from a perilous perch on one end of the pier, announced its coming with a whooping and a waving of his cap, at which Sarah muttered awful remarks, sounding like "Let him drown if he falls over—the young spalpeen!" With beating hearts they scanned the decks as the vessel drew close to the side, and the twins quickly picked out Corinne and her father waving from the side. But of Margaret they could discern not a sign, and an awful dread seized them that she must be too ill to be with the others.
By a special permit, obtained through Mr. Cameron, they had been admitted within the custom-house lines to the very gangway entrance itself. After maddening delays the vessel was at last made fast, the gangways adjusted, and the throngs began to come ashore. It was toward the last that the ones they were waiting for so anxiously appeared at the top, and then it was only Corinne and her father and aunt who came down.