This was the day before Louie left Merivale, and now she was on the great ship and feeling inexpressibly lonely as she watched the people around her receiving the good-bys from friends, while she had no one to speak to—no one in all that crowd who knew or cared who she was—a second-class passenger, jostled from side to side and once nearly run down as she turned to go back to her mother, whom she had seen in her berth before she came across to the first-class deck.
“I am better there,” she thought, just as some one said to her, “Louie! Louie!”
It was Herbert, and he soon had her hands in his and was saying to her:
“I’ve found you at last, when I had nearly given you up. I couldn’t let you go without seeing you; and as it is Saturday, I ran over from New Haven to say good-by. There are some friends of mine on the ship—Mr. Le Barron and his sisters. I want to present you to them, and to the doctor. I have met him at a club dinner. He is a good fellow, and may be more attentive to you if he knows you are my friend; and you are sure to need him, or your mother is. Where is she? I have been all over the ship and peered into nearly every state-room, hoping to find her or you.”
He had talked rapidly, and as he talked they had gone to a part of the vessel a little removed from the crowd.
“Oh, Herbert,” Louie said, when he gave her a chance to speak, “I am so glad you came. It is dreadful to be here all alone, with no one to say good-by.”
“Of course I’d come,” he replied: “but where is your mother I must see her.”
Louie hesitated a moment, and then replied, “We are second-class passengers and she is with them. I left her and came over here where I do not belong. I shall only stay a few minutes.”
“Second-class! Heavens and earth! You second-class!” and Herbert leaped to his feet and stared at Louie as if she had told him she was guilty of a crime.
“Yes, second-class,” she answered. “We cannot afford the high price of the first, and really we are very comfortable, and the voyage will be short. We shall be divided from the first, like goats from sheep, you know; but that doesn’t matter. There are ever so many respectable people second-class with us—professors and clergymen and students. We shall do very well.”