Mona is startled. Obvious as the word is, it comes like an inspiration. America! “The melting-pot of the nations!” All the races of the world are there. They must live in peace together or life could not go on.
When Oskar comes that night she tells him what the stranger has said, and his big, heavy, sleepless eyes become bright and excited.
“Why not? Why shouldn’t we? That great free country! What a relief to leave all the d——d mess of this life in Europe behind us!”
There is a difficulty, though. He has heard that America refuses to admit people who have been in prison. He has been four years in an internment camp—will America allow him to land? He must ask the chaplain.
The following night Oskar comes back with a still brighter face.
“It’s all right, Mona. Internment is not imprisonment in the eyes of American law.”
But there is one other difficulty. America requires that every immigrant shall have something in his pocket to prevent him from becoming a burden on the new country.
“It’s not much, but I have too little. If I had been a free man I should have earned four thousand pounds in the time I’ve been here, but when I leave the camp I shall only have fifty.”
Mona is overjoyed—at length she can do something.
“That’s no difficulty at all, Oskar. The auction is to come off soon, and after I’ve paid what I owe I shall have enough for both of us.”