"Something seems to have happened everywhere in Brazil," said Lola. "How near we are to land."
"Yes," cried her mother. "And there is your uncle waving his hat upon the wharf. Martim is with him! He sees us! Wave to him, daughter!" and the usually calm Senhora, flushed and excited, waved her handkerchief, smiling happily.
"I have not seen you look so gay for many months," said her husband, and she replied, "It is so long since I have seen my dear old home and my own people!"
Soon the ship was made fast, and the children stepped off the gang plank to be greeted warmly by the uncle whom they had not seen since Lola was a baby, and the cousin whom they had never seen before.
"Your Aunt Luiza and Maria are anxiously awaiting you at home," he said. "Here is the carriage, so we will hasten."
"Drive through the Street do Ouvidor, papa, will you not?" asked Martim. "It is so gay with the French shops, my cousins will enjoy it."
Martim was a handsome boy of twelve, with a bright, pleasant face, an only child, for the Senhor and Senhora Lopez had lost all their other children in an epidemic of yellow fever some years before.
"What are those men doing with long poles over their shoulders," asked Lola, pointing to several men who carried bamboo rods with baskets hung at the ends.
"They are fish and vegetable vendors," Martim replied. "Some of those baskets weigh over a hundred pounds. Those other men with the gaily-painted tin trunks on their backs peddle clothing."
"They make a lot of noise," said Affonzo.