What she had was a little slip that one of the neighbors she met in the office had torn out of his New York newspaper for her. It was only one line of fine type, under the heading “Arrived Yesterday”:
“North Cape, Griffith, from Marseilles.”
CHAPTER XVI.
KIT LEAVES THE “NORTH CAPE.”
THOUGH the voyage to and from Marseilles had been a pleasant one, and the business had been transacted in a way that he knew must be satisfactory to his employers, Kit was remarkably glad when the North Cape was inside of Sandy Hook again. It was time, more than time, for an answer to his letter to New Zealand; and although at his last news from home no answer had arrived, he felt sure that he must find one when he reached Huntington.
“I shall be busy for five or six days getting out my cargo,” he wrote home when his first rush on arrival was over; “but you can expect to see me by the beginning of next week. I have so many things to tell you; and I hope you will have news for me from Wellington.”
He was to have more things to tell them when he got to Huntington than he then had any idea of; but he sent some messages and packages home by Harry Leonard, as before, and worked away at his cargo till the greater part of it was in the warehouse.
He had eight hundred boxes of soap among his other cases, for Marseilles is a great point for the manufacture of soaps; “and it’s a pity they send so much of it away,” he often said to himself, “when they’re in such need of it over there.” But his soap needed particular attention; and he had to make several trips to his employers’ office to get directions concerning it. On his return from one of these trips he went into the cabin and found that there was a visitor in the Captain’s room.
“Come in, Silburn,” the Captain called through the open door. “Here’s a friend of yours come to see you.”
Kit went in, wondering whether his mother could have received important news and hastened to the city to tell him of it; but his hand was instantly seized by the rotund purser Clark, of the Trinidad, as fat and bluntly good-natured and short-breathed as ever.