“Yes, mamma. You are going to papa, and I am going to Uncle Joe. Who is going with me there?”
“Nobody, darling. There is nobody who can go. We have no relatives here, except our doctor-cousin, and he is too busy. So we are going to send you by express. It is a safe way, though a lonely one, and— Oh, my darling, my darling; how can I! how can I!”
Ever since papa had gone, so long ago, Josephine had had to comfort mamma. She did so now, smoothing the tear-wet cheek with her fat little hand, and chattering away about the things Bridget had put in her trunk.
“But she mustn’t pack Rudanthy. I can’t have her all smothered up. I will take Rudanthy in my arms. She is so little and so sweet.”
“So little and so sweet!” echoed the mother’s heart, sadly; and it was well for all that Doctor Mack returned just then. For he was so brisk and business-like, he had so many directions to give, he was so cheerful and even gay, that, despite her own forebodings, Mrs. Smith caught something of his spirit, and completed her preparations for departure calmly and promptly.
Toward nightfall it was all over: the parting that had been so bitter to the mother and so little understood by the child. Mamma was standing on the deck of the outward moving steamer, straining her eyes backward over the blue Pacific toward the pretty harbor of San Diego, almost believing she could still see a little scarlet-clad figure waving a cheerful farewell from the vanishing wharf. But Josephine, duly ticketed and labelled, was already curled up on the cushions of her section in the sleeper, and staring out of window at the sights which sped by.
“The same old ocean, but so big, so big! Mamma says it is peacock-blue, like the wadded kimono she bought at the Japanese store. Isn’t it queer that the world should fly past us like this! That’s what it means in the jogaphy about the earth turning round, I suppose. If it doesn’t stop pretty soon I shall get dreadful dizzy and, maybe, go to sleep. But how could I? I’m an express parcel now. Cousin-Doctor Mack said so, and dear mamma. Parcels don’t go to sleep ever, do they, Rudanthy?”
But Rudanthy herself, lying flat in her mistress’ lap, had closed her own waxen lids and made no answer. The only one she could have made, indeed, would have been “Papa,” or “Mamma,” and that wouldn’t have been a “truly” answer, anyway.
Besides, just then a big man, shining with brass buttons and a brass-banded cap, came along and demanded:
“Tickets, please.”