Blue-gray out of pearl-gray mist rose the shores of old England. Long
before the sun, the Tyro was up and on deck, looking with all his eyes,
a little awed, a little thrilled, as every man of the true American
blood who honors his country must be at first sight of the Motherland.
Slowly, through an increasing glow that lighted land and water alike,
the leviathan of the deep made her ponderous progress to the
hill-encircled harbor. A step that halted at the Tyro's elbow detached
his attention.
"What do you think of it?" asked Lord Guenn.
The eyes of Alexander Forsyth Smith rested for a moment on a toy
lighthouse and passed to the trim shore, where a plaything locomotive
was pulling a train of midget box-cars with the minimum of noise and
effort.
"It's like Fairyland," he said, in a voice unconsciously modulated to
the peace of the scene. "So tiny and neatly beautiful."
"Yes; it hasn't the overwhelming magnificence of New York Harbor. But
it's England."
"And you're gladder to get back to it than you'd confess, for shame of
sentimentalizing," said the other shrewdly, having marked the note of
deep content in that "it's England."
"One doesn't climb the rail and sing 'Rule, Britannia.'"
"It's a matter of temperament and training. Inside, I suppose, every
decent man feels the same about his own country, allowing for racial
differences. I don't suppose, though, you'd have quite the same
sensation if you were an American returning home after a long absence."
"Good Lord, no!" was the unguarded reply.
The Tyro laughed outright. "For once I've pierced the disguise of your
extremely courteous cosmopolitanism, and behold! there's John Bull
underneath, rampantly sure that nobody can be a really justified patriot
except an Englishman."
"Confound you and your traps!" retorted the young peer, ruefully. "Ah, I
say, Cecily!" he cried as Little Miss Grouch appeared, looking, in her
long soft traveling-coat, rather lovelier (so the Tyro considered within
himself) than any human being has any right to look.
She came over to the rail, giving the Tyro the briefest flutter of a
glance to accompany her "Good-morning, Mr. Smith."
"I appeal to you," continued Lord Guenn. "You're a cosmopolitan--"
"Indeed, I'm not! I'm an American," said the young lady with vigor.
"Heaven preserve us! You Yankees are all alike. You may be as mild and
deprecatory as you please at home; one sniff of foreign air, and up
goes the Stars and Stripes. Very well, I withdraw the appeal. To change
the subject, when are you coming to us? Laura will be on the tender and
she'll want to know."
"Dad will also be on the tender," observed Little Miss Grouch, "and
he'll want to know, oh, heaps of things!"
"True enough! We'll keep out of the way of your affecting reunion. Lady
Guenn's got a stateroom, Smith, in case it might rain. Come around and
meet her. Unless I'm mistaken, the tender's putting out now."
"Oh!" cried Little Miss Grouch. "That adorable kiddie! I nearly forgot
him. Don't forget, please," she added to the Tyro, "you promised to look
after them and see that they got on the right train."
"Steerage passengers come in later," said Lord Guenn. "Hullo! There's
your pater, on the upper deck of the tender. Doesn't look particularly
stern and unforgiving, does he? Perhaps you'll get off with your life,
after all."
Little Miss Grouch turned rather white, and shot an appealing look at
the Tyro, correctly interpreting which, he wandered away.
When he next saw her, she was in the arms of a square-faced grizzled
man, and manifestly quite content to be there. The tender was swaying
alongside in a strong tide-rip and the Tyro himself was making the
passage between the two craft carefully but jerkily, in the wake of
Alderson and Enderby. Once on the small boat he separated himself from
his companions, found a secluded spot at the rail, well aft, and
tactfully turned his back upon the Grouch group.
Evolutionists assert that we all possess some characteristic, however
vague, of all the forms into which the life-stock has differentiated.
Upon this theory the Tyro must have had in his make-up a
disproportionate share of the common house-fly, which, we are taught,
rejoices in eyes all around its head. For, though he sedulously averted
his face from the pair in whom his interest centered, he was perfectly
aware of what they were doing.
First Little Miss Grouch glanced at him and said something. Then her
father glared at him and said something. Then she turned toward him
again and made another remark. Then the disgruntled parent glowered
more fiercely and said a worse thing than he had said before. Then both
of them regarded him until his ears flushed and swelled to their
farthest tips.
All of which was a triumph of the visual imagination. As a matter of
fact they weren't talking about him at all. Little Miss Grouch was
afraid to. And her stern parent didn't even know who he was. The subject
of their conversation was, largely, the Battery Place house.
Still continuing to imagine a vain thing, the Tyro felt the gentlest
little pressure on his arm.
"Such a deep-brown, brown study!" said Little Miss Grouch's gay little
voice, at his elbow.
The Tyro turned with a sigh, quickly succeeded by a smile. It was very
hard not to smile, just for pure joy of the eye, when Little Miss Grouch
was in the foreground.
"Why the musing melancholy?" she pursued.
"I'm coming out of Fairyland into the Realm of Realities," he
explained. "And I don't believe in realities any more."
"I'm a reality," she averred.
"No." He shook his head. "You're a figment. I made you up, myself, in a
burst of creative genius."
"Just like that? Right out of your head?"
"Out of my heart," he corrected.
"Then why not have moulded me nearer to the heart's desire?" she queried
cunningly. "Do you still think I'm homely?"