He gazed thoughtfully at Mrs. Vanderlyn for a short moment and then thought better, even, of encouraging her thus much.  He loved his mother dearly but felt certain that she would be sure to wound the strangers if she did anything whatever for them.

“Perhaps the best thing, after all,” he said, “will be to let them, undisturbed, preserve the incognito which they evidently wish to keep in their misfortune.”  He had roused his mother’s interest more keenly than he had thought was possible.  He would do no more to rouse it.  He could only hope that it might bear for him the fruit he wished—­a pleasant way of gaining an acquaintance with the lovely girl.  He knew that it was possible it might do otherwise and make a pleasant meeting harder, even, than it seemed to be at present, but he had had to take the chance.  At any rate he had sufficiently excused himself, in her eyes, for any reasonable thing he might, himself, do, when the opportunity occurred, to gain the friendship of the steerage travelers.

As for himself, he now carefully avoided any appearance of observing them.  In one way or another he watched them a good deal, but he did so with such care that he was certain they were unaware of it—­at least was certain that the old man did not notice it.  He found his heart athrob with quite unusual speed, when, once or twice, he saw the girl’s big eyes directed toward him, not resentfully.  They were, he thought, the most resplendent eyes which ever had been turned in his direction, but he did not let her know that he observed her glances.

His interest continually deepened, and the voyage, which he had thought would be a tiresome trip, became one of the most absorbing journeys he had ever known.  Memories of those eyes were with him, even when he was beyond the shy range of their timid glances.  When, at the ship’s bow, he gazed over at the sporting dolphins or watched the water curving gracefully from the black prow, they floated in the sea, alluringly.  If he turned his glance above to watch the fleecy clouds which were the only vapors in the sky upon this ideal crossing, they shaped themselves into her profile, the azure of the sky lost by comparison with that which glowed serene from her great eyes.  John Vanderlyn was really dismayed to find that they were everywhere.  He had not been susceptible, as youths go, in the past; now he found himself enthralled, spellbound by the appeal of this small German girl who traveled cheaply in the steerage of a slow ship toward America, a part of a large company of needy aliens seeking a new home in what they thought the land of promise.

As the voyage neared its end he saw with some dismay that the old man had managed to make enemies among the emigrants by his aloofness.  The sea was very smooth, these days, and, under smiling skies the steerage-deck was swarming.  The stewardess announced that but one of all the seasick passengers, a young English girl, was left in the infirmary; the only other call for the ship’s doctor came from a mother for her tiny babe of two or three months which had been stricken with some increasing ailment before they had embarked upon the ship.  The emigrants were making merry daily, from early morning until nine or ten of evenings; there were few moments when from their part of the ship some crude music was not rising.