CHAPTER III
OFF TO BONNIE SCOTLAND
“I CAN’T believe yet that I’m really going!” Betty Wales stood on the promenade deck of the Glasgow boat, her arms full of Mrs. Brooks’s roses and Dr. Brooks’s salted almonds. Will’s arms were full of flowers too, and the Smallest Sister felt very important indeed because she had been entrusted with a fat package of steamer letters from Betty’s Cleveland friends.
“Beginning to feel a little homesick already?” teased Will.
Betty winked hard, and mother told Will that he wasn’t playing fair, and suggested that they should find the girls’ stateroom and leave some of their bundles in it.
“Miss Ayres is having a hunt for her trunk,” said Nan, joining them. “It isn’t in your stateroom, and it doesn’t seem to be on the wharf.”
“Why, she said she marked it to be put in the hold,” said Betty. “Has she asked if it’s there?” And Will was hurried off to find Madeline and inquire.
It wasn’t easy finding anybody or anything on that dock. The edges were crowded with people, the centre was filled with a confused mass of struggling truck horses and shouting drivers who were all terribly anxious to get somewhere, and didn’t seem to make the least progress in spite of all their noise. Deck-hands were busy with trunks and boxes, which they fastened to a pulley and swung out over the heads of the people, and then up and down again, into the hold. Once in a while a hansom wriggled its way through the drays to let out an excited passenger, who always acted as if he had expected to find the boat gone without him.
That was the way Bob acted, as she jumped out of her hansom and ran up the gangplank, holding a small boy tight by each hand and not paying the least attention to Babe and Betty, who shrieked frantically at her from their lookout on the upper deck.
“I had to bring these,” she explained breathlessly, when the Smallest Sister had intercepted her and conducted her to her friends. “The housekeeper took two off my hands for the day and the coachman took two, but nobody would take Jimmie or Joe.”
“A guy on de dock’s tryin’ to spiel wid ye,” announced Jimmie, who had lost no time in climbing up on the ship’s railing; and there, sure enough, was Mr. Richard Blake, with a fresh supply of flowers, making a megaphone of his hands and trying to ask where he should find Madeline.
“Somewhere down there,” shrieked back Betty. “But you’d better come up here and wait. Babbie and Mrs. Hildreth haven’t even come yet,” she added to the others. “What if they should be too late?”
“Seasoned travelers never come on board till the last minute,” said Nan. “It shows that you’re new to the business to be standing around like this.”
“Oh, but it’s such fun to watch everything,” objected Babe. “I don’t mind people’s knowing that it’s my first trip. It is, you see. What’s that bell ringing for?”
Mr. Wales looked at his watch. “It means that in five minutes more they’re going to put us fellows off.”
At that Babe got into a corner with her mother and father, and Betty into another with her family, leaving Bob to entertain Mr. Blake until Madeline sauntered up with the cheerful news that her trunk seemed to be lost “for keeps.”
“Just send it along if you happen to run into it anywhere, Dickie,” she said, and Mr. Blake promised to find it if it was anywhere in “little old New York.”
When the second bell had rung and the boat began to empty of its visitors the girls remembered Babbie again and began to be really alarmed. But just as Betty was frantically trying to ask her father, who had established his party on the edge of the dock, what in the world they should do if the Hildreths didn’t come, Babbie appeared, cool and serene in the prettiest of silk traveling suits. “Oh, I thought you knew we’d come on board,” she apologized. “Mother’s lying down and Marie is with her, and I——” Babbie blushed prettily. “Jack is awfully shy, and he just hates to meet a lot of people, so we stayed down below. I’m so sorry.” Babbie caught sight of a tall youth shouldering his way to the edge of the wharf, and waved a big bunch of violets at him.
“I wish we could start now,” said Madeline. “This shouting last speeches indefinitely isn’t all that it might be. Dick looks bored to death.”
“They’re taking up the gangplank,” announced Babe excitedly, tossing a rose to Will.
Just then a hansom drew up with a jerk, a distinguished-looking gentleman tumbled out; Jimmie Scheverin wriggled away from Bob’s firm grasp and jumped to the horse’s head, and the driver called to the crowd in general to “lend him a hand” with the trunk.
“No use hurrying now. They’ve given you up,” called somebody, and the crowd roared with laughter.
“Oh, I say, give de guy anudder chanst,” cried Jimmie shrilly, and even the dignified gentleman laughed at that. He could afford to, for they were letting down the gangplank again.
“He’s a prominent senator,” Babe whispered eagerly. “I heard a man say so. Think of having a boat wait for you! Well, we’re off at last. Dear mummy! Goodness, father waved so hard that he almost fell into the water! Betty Wales, are you crying too?”
The wharf was backing away from them; the crowd of excited people, shouting and waving flags and handkerchiefs, was only a great blur of color now.
“Well, that’s over,” said Madeline gaily. “I hate good-byes. Babe, cheer up. It’s only for three months, and you’re going to have the time of your life. Come and get bath hours and places for our steamer chairs, and then we can explore the boat a little before it’s time to eat our first and possibly our last meal afloat.”
“And we must look at the mail,” added Babbie, “and give most of our flowers to the stewardess to put on our table in the dining-room.”
“Aren’t you glad we’ve got some experienced travelers in the party?” laughed Babe, wiping away the tears, and taking Betty’s arm she marched her off after the others. “Now how did they know that was the deck steward? I should be afraid of mixing him up with the captain.”
Three days later Babe smiled loftily at the recollection of such pitiful ignorance. She had explored the ship from stem to stern, had stood on the bridge with the captain, danced with the ship’s doctor, exchanged views on the weather with the senator who had kept the boat waiting, played deck golf and shuffle-board, and made friends with all the children on the ship. All this she had done the first day out. The other two she had spent forlornly in her berth, with the stewardess to wait on her, Babbie and Madeline to amuse her, when she felt equal to being amused, and Betty to keep her company.
“Betty’s getting ready to come up here too,” she announced on the third afternoon, tucking herself into the chair beside Babbie. “Now we can decide where we’re going.”
“Oh, there’s time enough for that,” objected Madeline lazily. “Let’s enjoy the luxurious idleness of shipboard while we can.”
Babbie yawned. “I don’t enjoy it. A day or so is all right, but eight!”
“Specially if you’re inclined to be seasick,” put in Babe with feeling.
Betty appeared just then, and she agreed with the B’s. “It’s all right if you’re an invalid or tired, but as for me, I don’t see why people talk so much about the joys of the trip across. Being cooped up so long is stupid, and makes everybody else act stupid, and it’s just dreadfully dull.”
“And there aren’t any possibilities in it, somehow,” added Babe. “Of course you may meet some interesting people, but you can’t do anything but just talk to them a little and pass on.”
“Like ‘ships that pass in the night,’” quoted Babbie solemnly. “I always associate the people I’ve met on shipboard with too much to eat and no place to put your clothes.”
“And seasickish headaches,” added Babe. “Isn’t it almost time for bouillon? The doctor told me to keep eating and I’d be all right.”
“There’s the bugle for it this minute,” said Madeline, “and after that I propose a stunt. Let’s all go off separately and see what excitement we can unearth,—who can unearth the most, I mean. I don’t agree with you about the possibilities of shipboard. A town of seven hundred people certainly has possibilities, and that’s what we are,—a floating town. In order to make the contest more exciting, let’s give the winner a chance to say where we shall go first from Glasgow.”
“Goodie!” cried Babbie. “That’s something like. I knew you’d think up things to do, Madeline. Do you two invalids feel equal to so much exertion?”
The invalids declared that after they had had their mid-afternoon repast they should feel equal to anything, and five minutes later the four chairs were deserted.
“Time limit, two hours,” called Madeline, as she disappeared around the corner. “Meet in our chairs, of course.”
Betty lingered a little. Madeline’s plan sounded very amusing, but she hadn’t much idea how to carry out her part of it. She sauntered slowly down the deck, past the row of steamer chairs, many of whose occupants smiled and nodded at her as she passed. They might be very exciting people, Betty reflected, but she should never find it out. Madeline could do that sort of thing, not she. At the end of the deck Betty stopped and leaning over the railing looked off out to sea, wondering what Will and Nan and the Smallest Sister were doing just then. Presently her glance fell to the deck below. It was full of the queerest people. They were having a mid-afternoon lunch too,—drinking it with gusto out of big tin cups. Most of them were men, but near the cabin-door sprawled several children, and a few women, with bright-colored shawls over their heads, sunned themselves by the railing.
“Oh, that must be the steerage!” thought Betty, and didn’t know she had said it out loud until somebody answered her.
“Yes, that’s the steerage,” said a deep voice close to her elbow. “Should you like to go down and see what the steerage is like?”
Betty looked around and recognized the senator who had kept the boat waiting.
“Why—yes,” she began, blushing at the idea of talking to such a great man. “I should like to see it, only—isn’t it dreadfully dirty?”
The senator laughed. “I hope not. If it is, we needn’t stay long. You see—it’s a profound secret from the ship’s officials—but I’m going over on purpose to investigate steerages. I’m seriously thinking of coming back in one from Liverpool.”
“You are!” Betty’s eyes opened wide in amazement. “Without letting any one know who you are?”
The senator nodded. “Exactly. And by the same token I’m making this little visit to-day quite impromptu. Want to come? You can talk to the women and find out if they’re being made comfortable.”
“If this isn’t exciting, I don’t know what is,” Betty reflected, following the senator down the steps to the lower deck and past the guard,—who looked very threatening at first, but bowed profoundly when he saw the senator’s card,—into the network of low-ceiled passages beyond the tiny square of open deck. It was dirty, or at least it was unpleasantly smelly. But by the time Betty had satisfied her curiosity and would much rather have turned and gone straight back to her comfortable steamer chair, the senator had forgotten all about her, and surrounded by a group of eager men was deep in his investigation.
“I can’t interrupt, and I can’t very well skip off without saying anything,” thought Betty sadly, “because he might remember me after a while and try to find me.”
Judging by their conversation with the senator, most of the steerage passengers seemed to be men—Scotch or Irish, going back to the “Ould Country” for a visit to the “ould folks.” Betty listened a few minutes, and then went on to the end of the passage, which opened out into a room that seemed to be salon and dining-hall combined. Though this room was nearly empty, the air was close and stifling and Betty was going back to the deck to wait there for the senator, when her attention was attracted by a group of women gathered in one corner. They were standing around a little figure that sat huddled in a forlorn heap on the wooden bench along the wall. The woman—or the child, for she looked hardly more than that—hugged a baby tight in her arms, and rocked it back and forward, moaning pitifully to herself all the time.
Betty hesitated for an instant, and then went timidly up to the group. “What’s the matter?” she asked softly of one of the bystanders, a fat Irishwoman. “Can’t we do something to stop her crying like that?”
“Ah, it’s sore thruble she’s in, the pore young crayther,” explained the woman eagerly. “Her fayther and her mither and her two brothers died in the same week av the dipthery, and she’s takin’ her baby sister home to the ould folks. An’ she’s lost the money for her ticket to County Cork.”
“You mean she hasn’t any money at all?” asked Betty in amazement.
“Niver a cint,” the sympathetic Irishwoman assured her. “Shure, ’twas lost or stolen the first day out. Anyhow ’tis gone.”
“An’ we’ve none of us ony over to be lendin’ her,” another woman put in. “The times is that bad, an’ all.”
“How much does it cost to go to County Cork?”
“A pound an’ six from Derry.”
“How much is that, and how do you get to ‘Derry’?” asked Betty in bewilderment.
“Oh, the boat lets you off at Derry, if you’re for the ould country,” explained her interlocutress, “and a pound an’ six is $6.50 in the States money, miss. But she’d need a bite an’ a sup on the way for her an’ the babe.”
The girl had apparently paid no attention at all to this colloquy. But now she lifted her tear-stained face to Betty’s and held out the baby. “It’s only for her I’m carin’,” she said. “I had ten dollars saved over my passage back an’ the train ticket, an’ that goes a long way in Ireland. The old folks are poor, too, but I thought they’d take her in for that, and what I could be sendin’ them later. I couldn’t tend her an’ work, too, but whatever shall I do over here? There’s no work at all in Ireland.”
“IT’S ONLY FOR HER I’M CARIN’”
“What a darling baby!” cried Betty, as the blue eyes opened and the little red face crumpled itself into a tremendous yawn. “Why, I never saw such big blue eyes!” The little mother smiled faintly at this praise, and Betty wanted to add that big blue eyes evidently ran in the family. Instead she said, “Please don’t feel so unhappy. I’ll see that you have the money for the ticket to your friends, and perhaps——” Betty stopped, not wishing to promise anything for the others, though she was sure that if Babbie saw the baby’s eyes she would reduce the number of dresses she meant to buy in Paris to three without a murmur.
“An’ she ain’t the worst off, ayther, ma’am,” put in Betty’s voluble informant. “There’s an English gyrul that’s sick, pore dear, in her bunk, wid an awful rackin’ cough and a face as pale as death, an’ it’s tin cints she do be havin’ to take her home to her mither that’s a coster-woman in London town, an’ wants to see her daughter before she dies.”
“But why did she start if she didn’t have enough money?” demanded Betty.
“Wudn’t you, dearie, if you was dyin’ and knew it?”
“Ah, here you are. Are you ready to go back?” The senator had pumped his audience dry, and remembered Betty. “Well, how is it? Do they complain of the service?” he asked, as they went back to the upper deck.
“The service—oh, I’m so sorry! I hadn’t gotten around to ask them,” said Betty meekly, and then burst out with the stories she had heard.
The senator listened intently, and his keen eyes grew soft, as he fumbled for his pocketbook. “That’s the point, my dear young lady,” he said soberly. “After all, what are two weeks’ comfort or discomfort to people as poor as most of those? I saw a miserable fellow, too,—sick and discouraged, taking his motherless children back home before he dies. But your girl is worse off. Give her this. It will help a little.”
Betty gasped at the size of the bill, but the senator murmured something about wanting to smoke and hurried off, and there was nothing to do but go back to the others. She was the last of the quartette to reach the rendezvous.
“Two minutes late,” called Madeline as she appeared.
“That’s lucky,” laughed Betty, tucking her rug in, “because I couldn’t possibly decide where to go from Glasgow—I don’t know enough about the geography of Scotland—and my story is perfectly sure to take the prize.”
“H’m!” said Babe doubtfully. “I saw you. You needn’t be puffed up because you leaned over the railing and talked to a live senator. I’ve been talking to a live actress—there’s a whole company of them on board, Madeline, and you’ve never discovered them.”
“Which is she?” asked Babbie. “The stunning woman with the blue velvet suit?”
“No, the little mouse-like one with gray furs, and she’s played with——”
“Wait,” commanded Madeline. “You’ve told enough for the first time round. The stunning woman in blue velvet, if you care to know, is the maid of the mouse-like actress. I’ve talked to her. Now, Babbie.”
“Oh, I’m out of it,” explained Babbie. “Marie has a sore throat, and mother wanted to be read aloud to.”
“Well, the senator is only one of the people I’ve talked to,” put in Betty eagerly. “I’ve been in the steerage——”
“Oh, you lucky girl,” cried Madeline. “I tried to go yesterday and got turned down. How did you get past the guard? Do tell us all about it.”
So Betty “told,” saving the senator’s bill for a climax. At the end of the story Babbie declared that she simply must see the blue-eyed Irish baby, and Babe winked back the tears over the lonely English girl. While they were talking, some Harding girls of an older generation came up and made Madeline’s Dramatic Club pin an excuse for introducing themselves. Of course they heard about Betty’s visit to the steerage, and they were so interested that Madeline had an idea.
“All the passengers would like to help those poor people, I’m sure. Couldn’t we give an entertainment of some sort? There’s the captain, Babe. Go ask him if he’s willing.”
The captain assured Babe that “any show she wanted went on his boat,” the little gray-gowned actress, who had refused to appear at the ship’s concert, promised that she and her leading man would act a farce, the senator volunteered to canvass the steerage for somebody to dance an Irish jig, Babbie designed some dainty souvenir programs, and the other crowd of Harding girls arranged a “stunt number” that proved to be the star feature of the evening. Betty printed the tickets, and the senator sold them all at twenty-five cents “or over,” with astonishing financial results.
“That’s all right,” he said as he passed the money over to Betty. “There are three hundred first class passengers on this boat, but six of them are judges—they pay double—and five are colonels—it takes three tickets to get in a colonel.”
“And how many to get in a senator?” laughed Betty.
“Twenty,” said the senator solemnly, taking them out of his pocket.
So there was enough money to get the English girl to London, and the Irish girl to County Cork and then back to the States to work for her blue-eyed baby sister, and something over to pay the baby’s board with the “ould folks,” and to help out the poor man with the big family of children.
“And the best of it is, it’s given us something to do,” said Babe the last afternoon on board. “I don’t believe I should have been seasick if we’d thought of this sooner.”
“Easy to say that when land is in sight,” said Madeline loftily, squinting at the horizon line.
And sure enough land was in sight and presently it turned out to be the loveliest, greenest land that the girls had ever seen.
“What is it?” demanded Babe excitedly. “An island or a country?”
None of the girls knew, but a friendly passenger explained that it was both an island and a country, for it was Ireland.
“Why, of course,” cried Babe. “That’s why it’s so green. Is it really greener than other places, or does it only look greener because we haven’t seen any other places for eight days?”
Madeline and Betty thought it was really greener, while the B’s inclined to the opinion that it couldn’t be—that it was the atmosphere, perhaps.
“It’s certainly a queer atmosphere,” said Babe, as they hurried up on deck after dinner, to see the tender full of passengers off for “Derry.” “It’s eight o’clock this minute, and the sunset hasn’t finished up.”
“See that lovely white farmhouse up on that hill,” said Betty, pointing toward land. “Doesn’t it look as if there were fairies in those fields, girls?”
“I don’t know about the fairies,” said Babe, “but I love the way the white foam breaks on the green moss. Let’s go to Ireland.”
“Why, we haven’t decided”—chanted four voices together.
“Where we’ll go from Glasgow,” finished Babbie alone. “Well, it doesn’t matter, because mother will have to rest a day or two before we go anywhere. Just think! The poor thing hasn’t been up on deck yet.”
“And while she’s resting,” put in Madeline, “we can explore Glasgow and then, if she’s willing, go down to Ayr. That’s a nice little day trip.”
“Let me see,” said Babe reflectively. “Ayr—Ayr—I ought to know about it, but I don’t.”
“Robert Burns’ country,” explained Madeline briefly. “Why, that tender is really starting. Wave your handkerchiefs to the baby’s sister, Betty. She’s almost dropping the poor infant in her efforts to make you see her.”
“I looked at the map before dinner,” announced Babe proudly. “I know just where we are, and the real name of ‘Derry’ is Londonderry.”
“I found that out too,” declared Betty. “Maps are quite interesting when you’re on one, aren’t they? I used to hate geography in school, but from now on I shall adore it, I’m sure.”
“I must go and help Marie pack,” said Babbie with a last glance at the green hills, that were turning a beautiful misty gray in the twilight.
“We’ve got to pack too.”
“And go to bed early, because we’ve got to get up early.”
“So as to land in Europe,” finished Babe. “Doesn’t that sound too—sweet—elegant—grand for anything. Come on and get busy, girls.”
