"When?" cried Alida.
"Wednesday," I replied with false urbanity.
"Oh! The darling!" they cried in rapture, and made toward me.
"Wait!" I said with a hideous smile. "We have not yet left Sandy Hook! And I solemnly promise you both that if either of you ever again ask me one question concerning that pig—nay, if you so much as look askance at me over the breakfast bacon—neither you nor I will ever leave Sandy Hook alive!"
They have kept their promises—or I should never have trodden the deck of the S. S. Cambodia, the pride of the great Cunard Line, with my daughter Dulcima on one side and my daughter Alida on the other side of me, and my old friend Van Dieman waving me adieu from a crowded pier, where hundreds of handkerchiefs flutter in the breeze.
"Au revoir et bon voyage!" he called up to me.
"Toujours la politesse," I muttered, nodding sagely.
"That was a funny reply to make, papa," said Dulcima.
"Not at all," I replied, with animation; "to know a language is to know when to use its idioms." They both looked a little blank, but continued to wave their handkerchiefs.