“Helen, I believe you are older than she is!” exclaimed the youngest Miss Peachey.
“I don’t like her,” remarked the second succinctly. “She giggles and she gabbles. Helen, I wish some of us were going with you.”
“She doesn’t seem to mind travelling,” said the Miss Peachey with the prospective claim to the title.
“Dear me, Helen!” began Mrs. Peachey almost dolorously, “she—she seems very bright,” changing her comment. After all they must make the best of it. The Rev. Peachey clasped his stick behind his back, and tapped the deck with it, saying nothing, with rather a pursing of his wide shaven lips, Helen looked after Mrs. Macdonald helplessly, and her family exchanged glances in which that lady might have read depreciation.
“Your roll-up, Helen?” exclaimed Mrs. Peachey.
“Here, mamma.”
“You have seven small pieces, remember! Have you got your keys? Are you sure you are dressed warmly enough? It will be some time before you get to India, you know!” Mrs. Peachey had suffered an accession of anxiety in the last ten minutes.
They stood looking at each other in the common misery of coming separation, casting about for last words and finding none of any significance, for people do not anticipate an event for a whole year without exhausting themselves on the topic of it. Helen would keep a little diary; she would post it at Gibraltar, Naples, Port Said, and Colombo; and they were to write overland to Naples, and by the next mail to Calcutta, which would reach before she did. These time-worn arrangements were made over again. Helen thought of a last affectionate message to her Aunt Plovtree and was in the act of wording it, when a steward with a yellow envelope inquired of them for “any lady by the name of Peachey.” The contents of the yellow envelope had telegraphic brevity. “Good-bye and God bless you! J. Plovtree.” Helen read, and immediately took out her handkerchief again. “Just like Jane!” said Mrs. Peachey, sadly, with her eyes full, and Mr. Peachey, to cover his emotion read aloud the hours at which the message had been received and delivered. “Forty-two minutes” he announced “fairly quick!” Helen proposed a walk on the quarter-deck. “The luggage, my dear child!” Mrs. Peachey cried. “We mustn’t leave the luggage, with all these people about! James, dear, it would not be safe to leave the luggage, would it! You and the girls may go, Helen. Your father and I will stay here.”
AUNT PLOVTREE.