At last the twenty-third came, and the hour for starting to the station struck.
Rick and his sisters and their friends, Alan Armstrong, and David the Scot, who had become Phyllis's devoted knight, all formed her body-guard, laden with flowers and candy enough to have done credit to a prima donna's farewell.
Mrs. Dean held Phyllis fast as she kissed her good-by. "I forgive you for leaving me, my dear, though I hardly know how I am going to get on without you. You have been all and more than I expected you to be to me; and though I do admit your family's claim to you, I dislike your aunt very deeply for being forced to admit it; and you may tell her so from me, with my best wishes for the coming year. But I won't take no for an answer to my invitation to Hingham next summer, if I live; so be prepared," she said, as the carriage drove up to carry Phyllis away from her.
At the station there were the usual repeated good-bys, when every one strains hard to think of something to say, original and worth remembering, and thus rise equal to the occasion, but succeeds only in repeating the promise and request to write often, and in giving invitations, and assurances of visits and remembrance, reiterated with a fervor that is intended to conceal the conviction that the speaker is falling far below ordinary intelligence. But hearty good will goes far to make up for lack of conversational brilliancy, and Phyllis was surprised to find how fond she and her new friends really were of one another, and that there were tears on her lashes, glad as she was to turn her face toward Gotham. Alan and David wrung both her hands sore, bidding her not forget them, and assuring her that the very first thing they both did when they arrived in New York to seek their fortune—a plan to be carried out after the New Year—would be to come and see her, without which prospect their farewell would have been more dreary. The train moved out at last, past the smiling young faces lined up to nod good-by to Phyllis,—the girls, with tears in their eyes in spite of the smiles, waving wet handkerchiefs from the platform. Phyllis leaned forward to wave as long as the last of the row was in sight, then settled back in her seat with one long sigh for Boston and what it held that was dear to her, and a leap of the heart forward, for now she was really cut adrift from exile, and was homeward bound.
Winter though it was, Phyllis preferred the boat to the train for her journey, and in a short time was tucking away her belongings in her berth, taking supper in the gay dining-room, listening to the band for a little while, then lying down to slumber, which the thought that she was to waken in New York, and not the noise of the engines, rendered very light and fitful.
Far from waking in New York, she was up and dressed, with all her books, flowers, and candy strapped up ready to carry off, before the boat had sighted the upper end of Manhattan Island; and she stood, shivering in the gray light of the December dawn, as one by one the islands of the river crept past, looking very picturesque, seen from that view-point, and with proper forgetfulness of the misery and sin they sheltered.
Phyllis grew so excited she could not stand still as the boat crept down past the lower east side of the city, under the Brooklyn Bridge, swung around the Battery, and drew near her pier on the North River. How beautiful the spire of Trinity looked, and the new, high office buildings which dwarfed it! How beautiful were even the tall brick chimneys of the factories, for they were part of home! Phyllis could have put both arms around the square tower of the Produce Exchange and kissed the face of its clock, or hugged the Barge Office with enthusiasm, unattractive as it might be, ordinarily. She wondered if the immigrants crowded around it would have been as glad to see their distant homes again as she was to see hers. How painfully slow the boat's crew was in making her fast and getting out the gangway! How exasperating were the passengers—so many, too, though it was December—who were in advance of Phyllis, and moved like snails toward the pier! Phyllis was nearly suffocated with the flutterings of her heart, and she could hardly hold her packages, numerous enough to have warranted her dropping some overboard purposely.
At last, at last, she had surrendered her ticket, and was moving off the boat! And there, just at the gangway's end, concealed from her till this moment by the crowd—there was Jessamy, more lovely than ever, with her cheeks glowing, her eyes dancing; pretty Bab, all scintillating with joy; Tom, proud as a whole flock of peacocks in his new dignity, with Nixie—yes, actually Nixie—on a leash, sitting up and behaving like a man and a brother. And her aunt! Phyllis could hardly believe her eyes that Mrs. Wyndham had braved the chill of the winter morning and reached the pier before seven o'clock to prove to the "Unit," who prayed to stray no more, how glad she was to get her back.
Just what happened when Phyllis's foot touched the pier no one could say. She recognized her aunt's veil, Jessamy's fur collar, Bab's nose, and even Tom's rough coat, in the indiscriminate, rapturous embracing she was getting; but everybody was hugging her and talking to her at once, and Phyllis only knew that it was rather like a blissful Tower of Babel.
The party walked up Warren Street, talking still, all at the same time, Bab walking backward and spinning around like Barney in "Martin Chuzzlewit" after the accident. It took all of Tom's ability to keep her and Nixie from under people's feet. Mrs. Wyndham and Jessamy tried to behave with dignity, but it was not a successful attempt; and those who met the party probably set them down as harmless lunatics under the convoy of one young keeper; though there was one ruddy-faced old gentleman who, seizing the spirit of the occasion and the season, wished Babbie "A merry Christmas, my dear," in return for her having run into his portly form, and trodden on his most sensitive corn.