I spent a few days in New York, which was very dull, as everybody was off at the summer resorts. With a pretty heavy draught on father’s bankers, I filled a trunk or two with the latest styles and started for Saratoga, where I would spend a few days before joining our family party at Niagara.
Having paid the hackman as much again as his legal fare, and having seen my trunks checked through, I took my seat on a stool at one side of the already crowded deck of the Hudson river boat, which was steaming and hissing at the wharf like a chained griffin, and gazed, with the interest of novelty, at the scene before me. The long forests of masts and yards, with here and there a graceful flag or long fluttering streamer; the busy, fussy tugs, running hither and thither like noisy gossips, coughing and sneezing with bad colds; the patient jades of ferry boats, with their anxious human cargo, hardly waiting for the dropping of the chains; the ocean steamer looming its dark hull in the offing, and curling its black festoons of smoke on the morning sky; the white sailed skiffs leaning gracefully from the wooing wind, and the small row boat which a bare-armed sailor is sculling right under our prow, his blue jacket lying on the seat behind him, and the motion of his body, as he rocks from side to side, slushing the water about in the bottom of the boat, and wetting one sleeve of the jacket on the seat; the anchored ships, here and there, looking like immense laundries, with their rigging and sides covered with the clothes of the crew, all made me forget for a moment my own existence, till I was aroused to a consciousness of it by a shrill voice piping in my ear, “Herald! Times! Tribune!”
Having bought a paper, I turned round on my stool and commenced to read. People continued to crowd in; a hoarse whistle from our boat, or some other, I could not tell which, a few taps on a very hoarse bell, and with a shiver, as if the water was cold, we glided from the wharf.
I had read, perhaps, half a column when the rustle of a dress against my crossed feet attracted my attention, and I peeped under the edge of my paper. It was a very handsome black silk, and, being caught up over my foot, showed a beautiful bootee beneath it—an interesting bootee of purple glove kid, with a dainty high heel, and a firm curving instep—a bootee tapping the deck carelessly, as if about to execute a pirouette on its flexible toe. Standing against the silk dress, close to the bootee, was a pair of boots—large, dignified boots—with broad heels and thick soles, and coming down over their flat insteps were black pant legs. Lifting the edge of my paper a little I came in sight of the skirt of a black cloth coat, and hanging down by the skirt of the coat was a large white hand holding a morocco travelling bag—the hand of a middle aged man, white on the fingers and near the thumbs, and shaded with dark hairs on the side toward the little finger, on which was an onyx seal ring with P. M. in monogram. I knew the bootee belonged to a pretty woman, and the boots and hand to an intelligent elderly man, and to confirm my surmisings I took down the paper with a rattle and looked up at them. The lady turned her head and looked down at me the same instant.
“Why, Mr. Smith! is it possible?” she exclaimed.
“Miss Carrover!” I said, rising and blushing.
“Mrs. Marshman, sir. Mr. Marshman! an old friend of mine, Mr. Smith, of North Carolina.”
Mr. Marshman, a frowning man, with heavy gray brows and a grayer moustache, gave me his hand and a “glad to know you, sir.”
“Let me make you acquainted with our party,” said Mrs. Marshman, turning to two ladies and a gentleman, “Mr. Finnock! Mr. Smith, Miss Sappho Finnock! Miss Stelway!”
I made my obeisance, and, completing the usual commonplace remarks, “took in” the party.