“Yes,” said Ruth; “I have felt that, though I have seen it only in fine weather and from a liner’s saloon deck.” She mused for a few moments before she went on. “It will be a long time before I forget this voyage, steaming home over the sunlit water, with the wind behind us and the smoke going straight up, the decks warm, everything bright and glittering, and the glimmer of the moon and the sea-fire about the hull at night.”
There was an opening here for an assurance that the voyage would live even longer in his memory; but Jimmy let it pass. He feared that he might say too much if he gave the rein to sentiment.
“Were you not charmed with Japan?” he asked.
Ruth acquiesced in the change of topic, and her eyes sparkled enthusiastically.
“Oh, yes! It was the time of the cherry-blossom, and the country seemed a fairyland, quainter, stranger, and prettier than anything I had ever dreamed of!”
“Still, you must have seen many interesting places.”
“No,” she said with a trace of graveness. “I don’t even know very much about my own country.”
“All the Americans I have met seemed fond of traveling.”
“The richer ones are,” she answered frankly. “But until quite lately I think we were poor. It was during the Klondyke rush that my father first became prosperous, and for a number of years I never saw him. When my mother died I was sent to a small, old-fashioned, New England town, where some elderly relatives took care of me. They were good people, but very narrow, and all I heard and saw was commonplace and provincial. Then I went to a very strict and exclusive school and stayed there much longer than other girls.” Ruth paused and smiled. “When at last I joined my father I felt as if I had suddenly awakened in a different world. I had the same feeling when I saw Japan.”
“After all, you will be glad to get home.”