“How exciting!” Jessie began, but before she could utter further protest she was jerked into the circle and was soon whirling round madly with the rest until they had to stop from exhaustion and laughter.
“It’s good we stopped just when we did,” said Lucile, peeping around a corner of the cabin. “I see old lady Banks in the distance. ‘Pray, and may I inquire the cause of all this frivolity?’” and she imitated the old lady so perfectly that they went off into gales of laughter.
“You’ve sure missed your vocation, Lucile,” said Jack, when they stopped to breathe.
“That’s what we all tell her,” agreed Evelyn. “In Burleigh——”
“Doesn’t it make me homesick, just to think of it!” exclaimed Jessie.
“You haven’t long to wait now,” cried Lucile, springing to her feet and searching the sky-line as though she hoped to see beyond it. “A few hours more, and—the harbor!”
Great crowds thronged the deck of the steamer. It had been announced that fifteen minutes more would bring them in sight of land—their land. Eyes, old and young, were straining for that first glimpse of a country never so dear to them as now.
“There it is! It’s there, it’s there!” came in excited tones from different parts of the deck, the shrill tones of women and children mingling with the deeper voices of men. 189
“Yes, now you can see it,” Mr. Payton was saying. “That tiny speck—that’s America.”
The word sped like magic through the crowd, breaking the tension. They all went mad with joy. Men shook hands with perfect strangers; women hugged each other, murmuring incoherently, and mothers gathered their little ones to them, weeping openly.