Then, pushing towards her through the crowd, she saw Pinckney.
He had come to meet her, and as they shook hands, Phyl laughed.
He seemed so bright and cheerful, and the relief at finding a friend after that long, friendless journey was so great that she laughed right out with pleasure, like a little child—laughed right into his eyes.
It seemed to Pinckney that he had never seen the real Phyl before.
He took the bundle from her and gave it to a negro servant, and then, giving the luggage checks to the servant and leaving him to bring on the luggage, he led the girl through the crowd.
“We’ll walk to the house,” said he, “if you are not too tired; it’s only a few steps away—well—how do you like America?”
“America?” she replied. “I don’t know—it’s different from what I thought it would be, ever so much different—and this place—why, it is like summer here.”
“It’s the South,” said Pinckney. “Look, this is Meeting Street.”
They had turned from the street leading from the station into a broad, beautiful highway, placid, sun flooded, and leading away to the Battery, that chief pride and glory of Charleston.
On either side of the street, half hidden by their garden walls, large stately houses of the Georgian era showed themselves. Mansions that had slumbered in the sun for a hundred years, great, solid houses whose yellow-wash seemed the incrustation left by golden and peaceful afternoons, houses of old English solidity yet with the Southern touch of deep verandas and the hint of palm trees in their jealously walled gardens.