I was still too shaken with the varying emotions I had experienced the day before to bear well any reference to them, no matter how casual.  Fortunately, Dicky was too much taken up with his own remissness to notice my silence.

“I’ll go out this minute and attend to them,” he said.  “Try to keep the mater’s mind diverted from them if you can.  Better get her away on your sight-seeing trip as soon as possible.”

Having thus shifted his responsibilities to my shoulders, Dicky blithely hung up the receiver.  I turned to his mother.

“Well!” she demanded.

“He is going out now to attend to the trunks,” I said.

“There!  I knew he had forgotten them,” she exclaimed, with a little malicious feminine triumph running through her tones.  “When will they be here?”

“Not before noon at the earliest,” I repeated Dicky’s words in as matter-of-fact way as possible.  “Probably not until 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon.  We might as well start on our trip.  Katie is perfectly capable of attending to them.”

Then she said, “How soon will you be ready?”

“I am afraid it will be half an hour before I can start,” I said apologetically.

“That will be all right,” my mother-in-law returned good humoredly.  She was evidently much pleased at the prospect of the trip.

“It’s wonderful!  Wonderful!” she said as the full view of New York harbor burst upon our eyes when we came out of the subway and rounded the Barge office into Battery Park.

“Wait a moment.  I want to fill my soul with it.”

I felt my heart warm toward her.  I have always loved the harbor.  Many treasured hours have I spent watching it from the sea wall or from the deck of one of the Staten Island ferries.  To me it is like a loved friend.  I enjoy hearing its praises, I shrink from hearing it criticised.  Mrs. Graham’s hearty admiration made me feel more kindly toward her than I had yet done.

Neither of us spoke again for several minutes.  My gaze followed my mother-in-law’s as she turned from one marvel of the view to another.

At last she turned to me, her face softened.  “I am ready to go on now,” she said.  “I have always loved the remembrance of this harbor since I first saw it years ago.”

We walked slowly on toward the Aquarium, both of us watching the ships as they came into the bay from the North river.  The fussy, spluttering little tugs, the heavily laden ferries, the lazy fishing boats, the dredges and scows—­even the least of them was made beautiful by its setting of clear winter sun and sparkling water.

“How few large ocean steamers there seem to be!” commented my mother-in-law, as a large ocean-going vessel cast off its tug and glided past us on its way out to sea.  “I suppose it is on account of the war,” she continued indifferently.

At this moment I heard a comment from a passing man that brought back to me the misery of the day before.