By this time no handkerchief would have sufficed for my tears.  I reached out blindly, and Ted handed me a towel.

“I’ve got a sheet when you’ve sopped that,” he said.  Boys are such brutes.

Aunt Lida said, “Good-bye, my dearest.  You are my favorite niece.  You know I love you the best.”

I giggled, for she tells my sister the same thing always.

“Nobody seems to care much that I am going,” said Bee, mournfully.

“But you are coming back so soon, and she is going to stay so long,” exclaimed grandmamma, patting Bee.

“I’ll bet she doesn’t stay a year,” cried Ted.

“I’ll expect her home by Christmas,” said papa.

“I’ll bet she is here to eat Thanksgiving dinner,” cried my brother-in-law.

“No, she is sure to stay as long as she has said she would,” said mamma.

Mothers are the brace of the universe.  The family trailed down to the front door.  Everybody was carrying something.  There were two carriages, for they were all going to the station with us.

“For all the world like a funeral, with loads of flowers and everybody crying,” said my brother, cheerfully.

I never shall forget that drive to the station; nor the last few moments, when Bee and I stood on the car-steps and talked to those who were on the platform of the station.  Can anybody else remember how she felt at going to Europe for the first time and leaving everybody she loved at home?  Bee grieved because there were no flowers at the train after all.  But the next morning they appeared, a tremendous box, arranged as a surprise.

Telegrams came popping in at all the big stations along the way, enlivening our gloom, and at the steamer there were such loads of things that we might almost have set up as a florist, or fruiterer, or bookseller.  Such a lapful of steamer letters and telegrams!  I read a few each morning, and some of them I read every morning!

I don’t like ocean travel.  They sent grapefruit and confections to my state-room, which I tossed out of the port-hole.  You know there are some people who think you don’t know what you want.  I travelled horizontally most of the way, and now people roar when I say I wasn’t ill.  Well, I wasn’t, you know.  We—­well, Teddy would not like me to be more explicit.  I own to a horrible headache which never left me.  I deny everything else.  Let them laugh.  I was there, and I know.

The steamer I went on allows men to smoke on all the decks, and they all smoked in my face.  It did not help me.  I must say that I was unspeakably thankful to get my foot on dry ground once more.  When we got to the dock a special train of toy cars took us through the greenest of green landscapes, and suddenly, almost before we knew it, we were at Waterloo Station, and knew that London was at our door.

II

LONDON