Christopher and Columbus eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 448 pages of information about Christopher and Columbus.

Christopher and Columbus eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 448 pages of information about Christopher and Columbus.

Everybody on the ship was crowding eagerly to the sides.  Everybody was exhilarated, and excited, and ready to be friendly and talkative.  They all waved whenever another boat passed.  Those who knew America pointed out the landmarks to those who didn’t.  Mr. Twist pointed them out to the twins, and so did the young man who had remarked favourably on Anna-Felicitas’s looks, and as they did it simultaneously and there was so much to look at and so many boats to wave to, it wasn’t till they had actually got to the statue of Liberty that Anna-Rose remembered her L10 and the dollars.

The young man was saying how much the statue of Liberty had cost, and the word dollars made Anna-Rose turn with a jump to Mr. Twist.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, clutching at her chamois leather bag where it very visibly bulged out beneath her waistband, “I forgot—­I must get change.  And how much do you think we ought to tip the stewardess?  I’ve never tipped anybody yet ever, and I wish—­I wish I hadn’t to.”

She got quite red.  It seemed to her dreadful to offer money to someone so much older than herself and who till almost that very morning had treated her and Anna-Felicitas like the naughtiest of tiresome children.  Surely she would be most offended at being tipped by people such years younger than herself?

Mr. Twist thought not.

“A dollar,” said the young man.  “One dollar.  That’s the figure.  Not a cent more, or you girls’ll get inflating prices and Wall Street’ll bust up.”

Anna-Rose, not heeding him and clutching nervously the place where her bag was, told Mr. Twist that the stewardess hadn’t seemed to mind them quite so much last night, and still less that morning, and perhaps some little memento—­something that wasn’t money—­

“Give her those caps of yours,” said the young man, bursting into hilarity; but indeed it wasn’t his fault that he was a low young man.

Mr. Twist, shutting him out of the conversation by interposing a shoulder, told Anna-Rose he had noticed stewardesses, and also stewards, softened when journeys drew near their end, but that it didn’t mean they wanted mementos.  They wanted money; and he would do the tipping for her if she liked.

Anna-Rose jumped at it.  This tipping of the stewardess had haunted her at intervals throughout the journey whenever she woke up at night.  She felt that, not having yet in her life tipped anybody, it was very hard that she couldn’t begin with somebody more her own size.

“Then if you don’t mind coming behind the funnel,” she said, “I can give you my L5 notes, and perhaps you would get them changed for me and deduct what you think the stewardess ought to have.”

Mr. Twist, and also Anna-Felicitas, who wasn’t allowed to stay behind with the exuberant young man though she was quite unconscious of his presence, went with Anna-Rose behind the funnel, where after a great deal of private fumbling, her back turned to them, she produced the two much-crumpled L5 notes.

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Project Gutenberg
Christopher and Columbus from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.