On the one hand there was his home, and all his happiness, a comfortable bed, and sisters or a mother to tuck him up and give the good-night kiss.
And then there was Alf, poor Alf, up there biting his poor lips, trying to smile down at them, crushing his hat over his eyes—walking away from the side, then coming back again, and looking, looking, looking! Yes, he would give up everything, and accompany him into his exile.
He slipped his hand from out his mother’s and mingled again with the crowd. Amid the stream coming down from the boat, and the hurrying stragglers going up, who was to notice so insignificant a person as a small boy, in a sailor suit, pressing upwards? Once on deck he did not join Alf. He quite understood he must be a stowaway, and hide all the voyage in Alf’s cabin. For the present he crushed his small body into a space between two hen-coops. And then at last the quiver of life ran through the great inert vessel, and then the bells rang, and the straining sound of the ropes ceased, and the engines began to work, and sailors rushed [233] ]hither and thither, and officers called out instructions, and the men not on duty sat and looked sleepily at the frothing waters.
Freddie’s courage oozed away as rapidly as it had risen. After all, he would not go;—no, it was too much to ask. Who knows what horrible things would await him in that far land, away from father and mother and sisters? No; he would get off at once while he could, and Alf must go alone—after all, perhaps, he would not mind so very much.
He extricated himself from his cramped position and scurried along the deck in the hopes of meeting the captain. But the ship’s movement continued, and a frenzied glance to the side showed the gangways entirely gone, and the wharf slipping slowly, slowly, slowly back.
It was then that the horror of his situation mastered him and made him break through the crowd at the side, leap on to the seat, and implore, with sobs and tears, for the ship to stop.
“S—s—stay with us, Dolly,” he whimpered, when, at the end of the recital, everything seemed so vivid again he could hardly believe his little bed was secure. So Dolly, seeing his agitation was not even yet calmed down, brought a green volume of Alice, and read the Tweedledum and Tweedledee battle, and the moving tale of the Walrus and the Carpenter, until sleep conquered the excitement.
[234]
]CHAPTER XXII
THE WRITING-ROOM
It very early became necessary that Phyl and Dolly should have some sort of a room in which to write quite to themselves.
A sudden gust of wind in the house would bring scraps of papers floating from everywhere, and if any one had troubled to pick them up and read them, the eye would be sure to be met with some such choice literary morsel as, “With a smothered oath, the Earl flung away his half-smoked Havana, and ground his heel into the gravel;” or, “She drew her willowy figure up proudly, and gave him a look of scorn from her starry violet eyes.”