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HONEY-SWEET
* * * * *
The MacMillan Company
New York Boston Chicago
San Francisco
MacMillan & Co., Limited
London Bombay Calcutta
Melbourne
The MacMillan Co. of Canada, Ltd.
Toronto
* * * * *
[Illustration: Anne sat pale and wordless]
* * * * *
HONEY-SWEET
by
EDNA TURPIN
Illustrated by Alice Beard
New York
The MacMillan Company
1914
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1911,
by the MacMillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911. Reprinted June,
1913; August, 1914.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To
ANNE WOOLSTON ROLLER
and
MARY ADAMS MITCHELL
HONEY-SWEET
CHAPTER I
Anne and her uncle were standing side by side on the deck of the
steamship _Caronia_ due to sail in an hour. Both had their eyes fixed on
the dock below. Anne was looking at everything with eager interest. Her
uncle, with as intent a gaze, seemed watching for something that he did
not see. Presently he laid his hand on Anne's shoulder.
"I'm going to walk about, Nancy pet," he said. "There's your chair and
your rug. If you get tired, go to your stateroom--where your bag is, you
know."
"Yes, uncle." Anne threw him a kiss as he strode away.
She felt sure she could never tire of that busy, changing scene. It was
like a moving-picture show, where one group chased away another.
Swift-footed stewards and stewardesses moved busily to and fro. In twos
and threes and larger groups, people were saying good-bys, some
laughing, some tearful. Messenger boys were delivering letters and
parcels. Oncoming passengers were jostling one another. Porters with
armfuls of bags and bundles were getting in and out of the way. Trunks
and boxes were being lowered into the hold. Anne tried to find her own
small trunk. There it was. No! it was that--or was it the one below?
Dear me! How many just-alike brown canvas trunks were there in the
world? And how many people! These must be the people that on other days
thronged the up-town streets. Broadway, she thought, must look lonesome
to-day.
Every minute increased the crowd and the confusion.
There came a tall, raw-boned man with two heavy travelling bags,
following a stout woman dressed in rustling purple-red silk. She spoke
in a shrill voice: "Sure all my trunks are here? The little black one?
And the box? And you got the extra steamer rug? Ed-ward! And I
dis-tinct-ly told you--"
"The very best possible. Positively the most satisfactory arrangements
ever made for a party our size." This a brisk little man with a
smile-wrinkled face was saying to several women trotting behind him,
each wearing blue or black serge, each lugging a suit-case.
A porter was wheeling an invalid chair toward the gang-plank. By its
side walked a gentlewoman whom fanciful little Anne likened to a
partridge. In fact, with her bright eyes and quick movements, she was
not unlike a plump, brown-coated bird.
She fluttered toward the chair and said in a sweet, chirpy voice:
"Comfortable, Emily? Lean a little forward and let me put this pillow
under your shoulders. There, dear! That's better, I'm sure. Just a
little while longer. How nicely you are standing the journey!"
A man in rough clothes stopped to exchange parting words with a youth in
paint-splotched overalls.
--"Take it kind ye're here to see me off. I been a saying to mesilf four
year I'd get back to see the folks in the ould counthry. And here I am
at last wid me trunk in me hand--" holding out a bulging canvas bag.
"Maybe so I'll bring more luggage back. There's a tidy girl I used to
know--"
Beyond this man, Anne's roving eyes caught a glimpse of a familiar,
gray-clad figure. She waved her hand eagerly but it attracted no
greeting in return. Her uncle looked worried and nervous. Indeed, he
started like a hunted wild creature, when a boy spoke suddenly to him.
It was Roger, an office boy whom Anne had seen on the holiday occasions
when she had met her uncle down-town. Roger held out a yellow envelope.
Her uncle snatched it, and--just then there came between him and Anne a
group of hurrying passengers--a stout man in a light gray coat and a
pink shirt, a stout woman in a dark silk travelling coat, and two stout,
short-skirted girls with good-natured faces, round as full moons. The
younger girl was dragging a doll carriage carelessly with one hand. The
doll had fallen forward so that her frizzled yellow head bounced up and
down on her fluffy blue skirts.
"Oh! Poor dollie!" exclaimed Anne to herself. "I do wish uncle--" she
caught a fleeting glimpse of him beside the workman with the canvas
bag--"if just he hadn't hurried so. How could I forget Rosy Posy? I wish
that fat girl would let me hold her baby doll. She's just dragging it
along."
Presently the Stout family, as Anne called it to herself, came
sauntering along the deck near her. She started forward, wishing to beg
leave to set the fallen doll to rights, and then stopped short, too shy
to speak to the strange girl.
A lean, sour-faced man in black bumped against her. "What an awkward
child!" he said crossly.
Anne reddened and retreated to the railing. Feeling all at once very
small and lonely, she searched the dock for her uncle but he was nowhere
to be seen.
Then a bell rang. People hurried up the gang-plank. Last of all was a
workman in blue overalls, with a soft hat jammed over his eyes. Orders
were shouted. The gang-plank was drawn in. Then the _Caronia_ wakened
up, churned the brown water into foam, crept from the dock, picked her
way among the river vessels, and sped on her ocean voyage.