As they were going out after dinner, Marion said, "Perhaps we shall stop out to tea, father. I want to go and see a friend to-day, and she is sure to ask us to stay to tea."
"Very well, my dear, I can manage to get tea for myself and the boys," said her father, carelessly. Marion always had been allowed to do very much as she pleased, and since her mother's death, and she had got a situation, she had taken the reins quite into her own hands, and seldom asked advice, and still more rarely accepted it when it was offered.
Kate felt rather uncomfortable at first, when she thought of this steamboat excursion, but she soon forgot this in the pleasure and novelty of the scene around her, and she stifled the voice of conscience, by whispering that this would not happen again—she had only come this once, that her cousin might go with her to the Bible-class when the fine weather was over.
The steamboat was crowded, and there was a good deal of pushing and squeezing when they reached Greenwich Pier, where most of the passengers were landed.
"All tickets ready! all tickets ready!" called the man at the end of the landing-board, while another took each passenger's scrap of paper as they passed out. Kate had put her ticket in her purse for safety; and now put her hand into her pocket to get it; but to her dismay she found her pocket empty. "Oh, stop a minute, wait for me, Marion, I must have dropped my purse!" and Kate began to elbow her way through the crowd back to where she had been sitting. The place was vacant now, and she hunted all round, but no purse could be seen. "Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do!" she exclaimed, bursting into tears.
"What is it, why don't you come?" said Marion, who had now come back for her.
"My purse, my purse, I've lost it!" sobbed poor Kate.
"Lost your purse!" exclaimed Marion. "Did you drop it?"
Kate shook her head. "I don't know; I thought I put it into my pocket," she said.
The two were looking under the seats, and all round as they talked, but now they heard Bella and their companions calling to them from the pier to make haste, as the steamboat was about to leave, so they had to give up the search and run ashore.