“Here they are!” cried Geoffrey, from the gate. “Uncle, and aunt, and Dicky, and—good gracious! Is he really going to take that wretched tan terrier?”
“Won’t go without him,” said Bell, briefly. “There are cases where it is better to submit than to fight.”
So the last good-byes were said, and Elsie bore up bravely; better, indeed, than the others, who shed many a furtive tear at leaving her. “Make haste and get well, darling,” whispered the girls, lovingly.
“Pray, pray, dear Mrs. Howard, bring her down to us as soon as possible. We’ll take such good care of her,” teased Bell, with one last squeeze, and strong signs of a shower in both eyes.
“Come, girls and boys,” said kind Dr. Paul, “the steamer has blown her first whistle, and we must be off.”
Oh, how clear and beautiful a day it was, and how charmingly gracious Dame Ocean looked in her white caps and blue ruffles! Even the combination steamboat smell of dinner, oil, and close air was obliterated by the keen sea-breeze.
The good ship Orizaba ploughed her way through the sparkling, sun-lit waves, traversing quickly the distance which lay between the young people and their destination. They watched the long white furrow that stretched in her wake, the cloud of black smoke which floated like a dark shadow above the laughing crests of the waves, and the flocks of sea-gulls sailing overhead, with wild shrill screams ever and anon swooping down for some bit of food flung from the ship, and then floating for miles on the waves.
How they sung “Life on the Ocean Wave,” “Bounding Billow,” and “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep!” How Jack chanted,—
“I wish I were a fish,
With a great long tail;
A tiny little tittlebat,
A wiggle or a whale,
In the middle of the great blue sea. Oh, my!”
“Oh, how I long to be there!” exclaimed Philip, “to throw aside all the formal customs of a wicked world I abhor, and live a free life under the blue sky!”