"I'm awfully tired of Europe," said Muriel. "We go every year, but this time it may not be so bad, as we are to motor through Italy."
The most of this day the two new friends were together, separating only to finish the letters that they wished to mail at St. Michael's.
After dinner, when Irma went back to the dining saloon, the mail steward sat at a table with a scale before him, receiving money for the stamps he was to put on letters at Ponta Delgada.
"Why, here's my little lady of the stamps," cried a voice in Irma's ear, and turning, she recognized the little old gentleman, whom she had not seen since the first day.
Irma returned his greeting, and he went up with her toward the deck.
"It's so mild," she explained, "that my aunt said I might sit outside. I am so anxious to see land."
"Even if we were nearer shore, there's not moon enough to show an outline. Why are you so anxious to see land?"
"Because it will be my first foreign country. Except when we sailed from New York, I had never been out of New England."
"There are worse places to spend one's life in than New England," and the old gentleman sighed, as he added, "yet in the fifty years since I left it, I have been back only half a dozen times."