“It may be that the gulf shall wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew,”
absently murmured Lucy, looking on this beautiful apparition.
“But I can't help thinking of Ulysses' cabin-boy, yonder,” said Cousin Frank, after a pause; “can you, Aunt Melissa?”
“I don't understand what you're talking about Franklin,” answered Aunt Melissa, somewhat severely.
“Why, I mean that there is a poor wretch of a boy on board there, who's run away, and whose heart must be aching just now at the thought of the home he has left. I hope Ulysses will be good to him, and not swear at him for a day or two, or knock him about with a belaying-pin. Just about this time his mother, up in the country, is getting ready his supper, and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room, having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and climbed in at the window”--“Why, Franklin, this isn't true, is it?” asks Aunt Melissa.
“Well, no, let's pray Heaven it isn't, in this case. It's been true often enough to be false for once.”
“What a great, ugly, black object a ship is!” said Cousin Lucy.
Slowly the city rose up against the distance, sharpening all its outlines, and filling in all its familiar details,--like a fact which one dreams is a dream, and which, as the mists of sleep break away, shows itself for reality.
The air grows closer and warmer,--it is the breath of the hot and toil-worn land.
The boat makes her way up through the shipping, seeks her landing, and presently rubs herself affectionately against the wharf. The passengers quickly disperse themselves upon shore, dismissed each with an appropriate sarcasm by the tipsy man, who has had the means of keeping himself drunk throughout, and who now looks to the discharge of the boat's cargo.
As our friends leave the wharf-house behind them, and straggle uneasily, and very conscious of sunburn, up the now silent length of Pearl Street to seek the nearest horse-cars, they are aware of a curious fidgeting of the nurse, who flies from one side of the pavement to the other and violently shifts the baby from one arm to the other.