"I have been trying to tell Miss Cartright what a very nice place Boston is to live in," added Mr. Cabot softly.
"Well, we all will keep on telling her, and then maybe she'll be convinced," Jean declared.
So they parted for the night.
With the morning came the bustle and confusion of landing. Much of Uncle Bob's time was taken up with the inspection of trunks, and with helping Giusippe sign papers and answer the questions necessary for his admission to the United States. Then came the parting. They bade a hurried good-bye to Miss Cartright, whom Uncle Bob was to put aboard the New York train, and into a cab bundled Hannah, Giusippe, and Jean, in which equipage, almost smothered in luggage, they were rolled off to Beacon Hill.
Nothing could exceed Giusippe's interest in these first glimpses of the new country to which he had come. For the next few weeks he went about as if in a trance, struggling to adjust himself to life in an American city. How different it was from his beloved Venice! How sharp the September days with their early frost! How he missed the golden warmth of the sunny Adriatic and the familiar sights of home! During his journey through France and England the constant change of travel had carried with it sufficient excitement to keep him from being homesick; but now that he was settled for a time in Boston he got his first taste of what life in the United States was to be like. Not that he was disappointed; it was only that he felt such a stranger to all about him. The automobiles, subways, elevated roads, all confused his brain, and the dusty streets made his throat smart with dryness.
Daily, however, he became more and more accustomed to his surroundings, and when at last he ventured out alone and discovered that he could find his way back again his courage rose. Then he began going on errands for Hannah, and was proud and glad to be of use. He accompanied Uncle Bob to his office and arrived home alone in safety. Gradually the strangeness of his new home wore away. Every novel sight he beheld, every custom which was surprising to him, everything that he did not understand he asked a score of questions about. It was why, why, why, from morning until night. His questions, fortunately, were intelligent ones, and as he remembered with accuracy the answers given him and applied the knowledge thus gained to future conditions he made amazing headway in becoming Americanized. He got books and read them; he visited the churches, Library, and Art Museum. And when he saw how much of its beauty the New World had borrowed from the Old he no longer felt cut off from his Italian home.
Uncle Bob, in the meantime, had been forced to plunge so deeply into business that he had had little opportunity to aid his protégé in these explorations. But one Saturday noon he came home and announced that he was to treat himself to a half holiday.
"I am not going back to the office to-day," he declared. "Instead I intend to carry off you two young persons and show you something very beautiful, the like of which you will see nowhere else in all the world."
"What is it?" cried Jean and Giusippe.
"Oh, I'm not telling. Just you be ready directly after luncheon to go with me to Cambridge."