It was not an easy good-by to say. Mrs.
Ashe and Amy both cried, and Mabel was said to be in deep affliction
also. But there were alleviations. The squadron was coming home in the
autumn, and the officers would have leave to see their friends, and of
course Lieutenant Worthington must come to Burnet--to visit his sister.
Five months would soon go, he declared; but for all the cheerful
assurance, his face was rueful enough as he held Katy's hand in a long
tight clasp while the little boat waited to take him ashore.
After that it was just a waiting to be got through with till they
sighted Sandy Hook and the Neversinks,--a waiting varied with peeps at
Marseilles and Gibraltar and the sight of a whale or two and one distant
iceberg. The weather was fair all the way, and the ocean smooth. Amy was
never weary of lamenting her own stupidity in not having taken Maria
Matilda out of confinement before they left Venice.
"That child has hardly been out of the trunk since we started," she
said. "She hasn't seen anything except a little bit of Nice. I shall
really be ashamed when the other children ask her about it. I think I
shall play that she was left at boarding-school and didn't come to
Europe at all! Don't you think that would be the best way, mamma?"
"You might play that she was left in the States-prison for having done
something naughty," suggested Katy; but Amy scouted this idea.
"She never does naughty things," she said, "because she never does
anything at all.
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