For they loved England.  They loved it with the love of youth whose enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one direction.  And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother, in England.  It seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so far away, and leave her there.  It was nonsense, they knew, to feel like that.  She was with them just the same; wherever they went now she would be with them, and they could hear her saying at that very moment, “Little darlings, don’t cry....”  But it was a gloomy, drizzling afternoon, the sort of afternoon anybody might be expected to cry on, and not one of the people waving handkerchiefs were waving handkerchiefs to them.

“We ought to have hired somebody,” thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.

“I believe I’ve gone and caught a cold,” remarked Anna-Felicitas in her gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of bother with her eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the fact that she was sniffing.

Anna-Rose discreetly didn’t look at her.  Then she suddenly whipped out her handkerchief and waved it violently.

Anna-Felicitas forgot her eyes and nose and craned her head forward.  “Who are you waving to?” she asked, astonished.

“Good-bye!” cried Anna-Rose, waving, “Good-bye!  Good-bye!”

“Who?  Where?  Who are you talking to?” asked Anna-Felicitas.  “Has any one come to see us off?”

“Good-bye!  Good-bye!” cried Anna-Rose.

The figures on the wharf were getting smaller, but not until they had faded into a blur did Anna-Rose leave off waving.  Then she turned round and put her arm through Anna-Felicitas’s and held on to her very tight for a minute.

“There wasn’t anybody,” she said.  “Of course there wasn’t.  But do you suppose I was going to have us looking like people who aren’t seen off?”

And she drew Anna-Felicitas away to the chairs, and when they were safely in them and rolled up to their chins in the rug, she added, “That man—­” and then stopped.  “What man?”

“Standing just behind us—­”

“Was there a man?” asked Anna-Felicitas, who never saw men any more than she, in her brief career at the hospital, had seen pails.

“Yes.  Looking as if in another moment he’d be sorry for us,” said Anna-Rose.

“Sorry for us!” repeated Anna-Felicitas, roused to indignation.

“Yes.  Did you ever?”

Anna-Felicitas said, with a great deal of energy while she put her handkerchief finally and sternly away, that she didn’t ever; and after a pause Anna-Rose, remembering one of her many new responsibilities and anxieties—­she had so many that sometimes for a time she didn’t remember some of them—­turned her head to Anna-Felicitas, and fixing a worried eye on her said, “You won’t go forgetting your Bible, will you, Anna F.?”

“My Bible?” repeated Anna-Felicitas, looking blank.