There was a wild waving of handkerchiefs on the ship, and a frantic fluttering of white among the flowers, as if a flock of butterflies had been frightened up into the air. Still we were a long time getting in, and I grew quite impatient; but finally Louise, who had attended to my packing, took charge of my handbag, my sunshade and coat, with her mistress's and Miss Woodburn's things. The moment had come to bid the ship good-bye.

"Now," said Mrs. Ess Kay, slipping her arm into mine, "I wonder, dear child, if you would mind being left alone to deal with the custom-house people? You'd stand under your own letter 'B,' of course."

"Oh, Katherine, do you think even Letter B, which sounds so like a warning to young men, a proper chaperon for a Duchess's daughter?" exclaimed Sally Woodburn.

I laughed, but Mrs. Ess Kay didn't. She evidently considers things connected with the American Custom House no fit subject for frivolity. She went on, without answering; "I'm under 'K,' and Sally 'W.' We'll both have all we can attend to wrestling with our own Fiends, and Louise will be just as busy. But you're a British subject, on a short visit to this country, and they won't be as diabolical to you, dear. I did all the swearing necessary for you in the saloon, with my own, when the tiresome man came on board, and there's really nothing left for you to bother with on the dock, except to open your boxes and say you have nothing to declare."

I was glad that since profanity had been called for in the saloon, owing to the tiresomeness of a man, it had been Mrs. Ess Kay who was obliged to give vent to it, not I; but I felt rather defrauded that I couldn't have heard, and I wondered if she had gone so far as to mention "damn." All I said out loud, however, was that I was sure I could manage very well in the docks, and Mrs. Ess Kay appeared much relieved. "That's perfectly sweet of you, Betty," she said, launching a daggery glance at poor, inoffensive Sally, for some reason which I couldn't understand. "I hope you won't think I'm horrid not to have asked you to label your baggage 'K,' so it could go with mine. It's better not, for everyone concerned; I'll explain afterwards why; and Louise shall take you to 'B.'"

Louise did take me to "B," which they had thoughtfully printed very large and black on a wooden wall of the dock, in a row with all the other letters of the alphabet. A good many people from the ship were collecting beneath theirs, as if they were animals getting ready to join the procession for the ark, under the heading of Cat or Elephant, as the case might be; and they all seemed worried and apprehensive, as you do at the dentist's, even when you try to distract your mind by looking at the pictures in Punch.

Louise put my bag on the wooden floor, and folded my coat on it. "Miladi will do well to sit down," said she. "It may be that the baggage do not come immédiatement." With this she bustled away to the Louise rabbit warren, wherever it was, leaving me to the tender mercies of fellow "B's," who began to swarm round me and buzz distractedly.

I subsided on the bag, which was very like sitting on the floor; but it was stifling down there among people's feet; besides, mine soon got "pins and needles"; so presently I popped up like a Jack out of his Box, and almost knocked off a man's nose with the crown of my hat.

I said "I beg your pardon!" though what the nose was doing so near the top of my head I couldn't conceive, until its owner (fumbling with one hand for his handkerchief to staunch a drop of blood, and snatching off his straw hat with the other, already full of notebooks and things) blurted out abruptly: "Are you Lady Bulkeley?"

I was surprised!