The forward deck of the steamer, the steerage deck, which is the only place that we are allowed to go, was crowded with people, all poor and with their trunks and boxes and paper bags all round them.  When Uncle set down his box, there was soon quite a little crowd around him, so that I could hardly see him.  But I could hear them laughing, and I knew that they were “taking a rise out of him,” as they call it,—­just as they did in the emigration sheds on shore.  I heard Uncle say, “Let wine be brought:  I am faint;” and some one else said, “Yes, let it,” and there arose a big shout of laughter.

Cousin Willie had sneaked away with his box down to the lower deck.  I thought it mean of him not to stay with his father.  I never noticed till now what a sneaking face Cousin Willie has.  In his uniform, as Crown Prince, it was different.  But in his shabby clothes, among these rough people, he seems so changed.  He walks with a mean stoop, and his eyes look about in such a furtive way, never still.  I saw one of the ship’s officers watching him, very closely and sternly.

Cousin Karl of Austria, and Cousin Ruprecht of Bavaria, are not here.  We thought they were to come on this ship, but they are not here.  We could hardly believe that the ship would sail without them.

I managed to get Uncle William out of the crowd and down below.  He was glad to get off the deck.  He seemed afraid to look at the sea, and when we got into the big cabin, he clutched at the cover of the port and said, “Shut it, help me shut it, shut out the sound of the sea;” and then for a little time he sat on one of the bunks all hunched up, and muttering, “Don’t let me hear the sea, don’t let me hear it.”  His eyes looked so queer and fixed, that I thought he must be in a sort of fit, or seizure.  But Uncle Henry and Cousin Willie and Cousin Ferdinand came into the cabin and he got better again.

Cousin Ferdinand has got hold of a queer long overcoat with the sleeves turned up, and a little round hat, and looks exactly like a Jew.  He says he traded one of our empty boxes for the coat and hat.  I never noticed before how queer and thick Cousin Ferdinand’s speech is, and how much he gesticulates with his hands when he talks.  I am sure that when I visited at Sofia nobody ever noticed it.  And he called Uncle William and Uncle Henry “Mister,” and said that on the deck he had met two “fine gentlemen,” (that’s what he called them), who are in the clothing trade in New York.  It was with them he traded for the coat.

Cousin Ferdinand, who is very clever at figures, is going to look after all our money, because the American money is too difficult for Uncle William and Cousin Willie to understand.  We have only a little money, but Cousin Ferdinand said that we would put it all together and make it a pool.  But when Uncle Henry laughed, and turned his pockets out and had no money at all, Cousin Ferdinand said that it would not be a pool.  He said he would make it “on shares” and explained it, but I couldn’t understand what it meant.