Christopher and Columbus Read Online Free PDF Page B

too polite though, to
say so, and they sat in silence under the rug till the
St. Luke
whistled and stopped, and Anna-Rose began hastily
to make conversation about Christopher and Columbus.
    She was ashamed of having shown so much of her woe at leaving
England. She hoped Anna-Felicitas hadn't noticed. She certainly
wasn't going on like that. When the
St. Luke
whistled, she was ashamed that it wasn't only
Anna-Felicitas who jumped. And the amount of brightness she put
into her voice when she told Anna-Felicitas it was pleasant to go
and discover America was such that that young lady, who if slow was
sure, said to herself, "Poor little Anna-R., she's really
taking it dreadfully to heart."
    The
St. Luke
was only dropping anchor for the night in the
Mersey, and would go on at daybreak. They gathered this from the
talk of passengers walking up and down the deck in twos and threes
and passing and repassing the chairs containing the silent figures
with the round heads that might be either the heads of boys or of
girls, and they were greatly relieved to think they wouldn't
have to begin and be sea-sick for some hours yet. "So
couldn't we walk about a little?" suggested
Anna-Felicitas, who was already stiff from sitting on the hard cane
chair.
    But Aunt Alice had told them that the thing to do on board a
ship if they wished, as she was sure they did, not only to avoid
being sick but also conspicuous, was to sit down in chairs the
moment the ship got under way, and not move out of them till it
stopped again. "Or, at least, as rarely as possible,"
amended Aunt Alice, who had never herself been further on a ship
than to Calais, but recognized that it might be difficult to avoid
moving sooner or later if it was New York you were going to.
"Two such young girls travelling alone should be seen as
seldom as ever you can manage. Your Uncle is sending you
second-class for that very reason, because it is so much less
conspicuous."
    It was also very much less expensive, and Uncle Arthur's
generosities were of the kind that suddenly grow impatient and
leave off. Just as in eating he was as he said, for plain roast and
boiled, and messes be damned, so in benefactions he was for lump
sums and done with it; and the extras, the driblets, the here a
little and there a little that were necessary, or were alleged by
Aunt Alice to be necessary, before he finally got rid of those
blasted twins, annoyed him so profoundly that when it came to
taking their passage he could hardly be got not to send them in the
steerage. This was too much, however, for Aunt Alice, whose maid
was going with them as far as Euston and therefore would know what
sort of tickets they had, and she insisted with such quiet
obstinacy that they should be sent first-class that Uncle Arthur at
last split the difference and consented to make it second. To her
maid Aunt Alice also explained that second-class was less
conspicuous.
    Anna-Rose, mindful of Aunt Alice's words, hesitated as to
the wisdom of walking about and beginning to be conspicuous
already, but she too was stiff, and anything the matter with
one's body has a wonderful effect, as she had already in her
brief career had numerous occasions to observe, in doing away with
prudent determinations. So, after cautiously looking round the
corners to see if the man who was on the verge of being sorry for
them were nowhere in sight, they walked up and down the damp, dark
deck; and the motionlessness, and silence, and mist gave them a
sensation of being hung mid-air in some strange empty Hades between
two worlds.
    Far down below there was a faint splash every now and then
against the side of the
St. Luke
when some other steamer, invisible in the mist,
felt her way slowly by. Out ahead lay the sea, the immense uneasy
sea that was to last ten days and nights before they got to the
other side, hour after hour of it, hour after hour of tossing
across it further and further away; and forlorn and ghostly as the
ship felt, it yet, because on