“Don’t eye the house so gloomily, Jan, dear,” said Mrs. Graham. “It is only waiting for you to come back, and it will not wait long, I hope.”
At the station they found Dorothy Schuyler and Cena North there before them, laden with flowers and candy, and a book apiece. Gwen and Gladys had provided Jan with a book, Sydney and Jack had given her candy and magazines, and flowers already filled her hands. They could not help laughing as they saw Dorothy and Cena’s contributions, for Jan could not have eaten and read on her journey all the food for body and mind with which she was encumbered if she had been going across the ocean on one of the slow Atlantic transports. Mr. Graham arrived just as his wife came back from checking Jan’s trunks; he, too, carried a box of candy, and stopped dismayed as he saw the supply already in Jan’s hands.
“Dear me, Janet; I wish I had brought you a box of pepsin tablets, instead of more sweets! Pray don’t eat all this candy—bestow it on the crying baby you’re certain to find on the train—it’s always there,” he said. “Now, we will all go over on the ferry with Miss Lochinvar, put her snugly in her section, and then sing: ‘Hurrah for the wild and woolly!’” The smiles that met this effort at cheerfulness on Mr. Graham’s part were feeble. The escort got into motion, and passed out on the upper deck of the big ferry-boat, all trying to keep next Jan, who could not have accommodated them all if she had had more sides than an octagon.
The last glimpse of Jan.
Mr. Graham and Sydney stowed away her bag and parcels in the rack. Sydney suggested that they put up a sign, “Fresh every hour,” for the parcels were so preponderatingly representative of a famous confectioner.
“Good-by, Jan. Write every week at least,” cried Dorothy and Cena, recognizing that Jan’s family had a claim to the last embraces.
“Good-by, dear little Janet. Tell Jennie to send you back by September if she doesn’t want me to go out and get you,” said Jan’s uncle, kissing her warmly.
“That wouldn’t scare her,” sobbed Jan, clinging to him.
“Good-by, dear. Tell your mother that I feel as though I had lost one of the dearest of my own children,” said Aunt Tina, no longer indifferent, but with something suspiciously like a sob in her voice.