The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted Part 13

CHAPTER NINE

LANDING

"O Dear! It seems as though I couldn't wait a minute longer. It takes such an eternity for them to get in. Do you think you can see her, Karl?

Take the gla.s.ses and look. See if you don't think that little red speck in the bow is her?"

"After the verb 'to be'--"

"O, bother, Karl! You are fussier about my English than my German."

The tall fair young man smiled, but answered stubbornly: "It's a fact, Hannah, you are more careless about English than about German. Not in grammar only, but in p.r.o.nunciation. How is a poor foreigner to guess that 'sumpn' for instance means 'something'?"

"If it didn't mean anything, I wouldn't say it," retorted Hannah saucily. "Is there any other criticism you have to make upon my use of my native tongue, Mr. Germany?"

"You drop your final 'g' occasionally, and always your final 'r'," went on the accuser.

Hannah laughed. "You can't hear an 'r' unless it's rolled over the tongue like macaroni, Karl Von Arndtheim! Just wait till you hear the western girls talk, and you'll be satisfied. Look! Look! It's as much as an inch nearer. Give me the gla.s.ses again. I do believe that's Frieda.

No, not the red one, but the blue one with the veil floating. Can you see?"

Karl pushed his way through the crowd, drawing Hannah safely along into a little open s.p.a.ce at one side. Stationing himself against a pile of boxes, he helped her climb to the top and support herself by clinging to his shoulder.

"There, child, you can sit and watch, and she'll see you better than if you were mixed up in the crowd. Put up that sunshade and wave it. She will think you are a great blue bird ready to fly out and meet her."

"I wish I were a gull. I'd fly right to her dear shoulder and peck her cheek. But are you sure I'm not too heavy, Karl? This thing is wobbly and I lean on you awfully for such a fat lady as I am."

"I can endure it! I say, Hannah, now she is so nearly here, I'm beginning to get excited myself. _Die niedliche Kleine!_ It doesn't seem two years ago that you youngsters used to send cakes and things down to my window from yours. You were a pair of ministering angels."

"Wasn't it fun? Poor Karl! I did pity you so, cooped up in the house that way. And you played the violin like an angel yourself, like a grieving one."

"Well, we've all given up the angel hypothesis by this time, though it was useful in getting us interested in each other. There! This time I see her, not in red nor in blue, but in brown. See! She is jumping up and down and waving to us."

The moments that followed while the great vessel swung heavily into place alongside the pier, and the ropes were made fast, and the gangplank was flung across, seemed interminable to impatient Hannah.

Frieda was almost the first to land, and as she stepped on sh.o.r.e, she found herself lifted in a mighty hug, which she returned with all the strength of two muscular arms, gasping little cries of "_Ach, meine Hannah!_" as she did so.

When the embracing stopped for a moment, Karl stepped forward, hat in hand, to greet Frieda in his turn. She seized his hand and wrung it, repeating: "_Ach_, my heart could burst for gladness. My dears! My dears! But where is Miss Lyndesay?"

"Miss Lyndesay?" cried Hannah, looking wildly about. "Not my Miss Lyndesay?" But as she spoke, some one bent down and kissed her mouth, rounded with amazement.

"Yes, your Miss Lyndesay, and Frieda's guardian for the present. We must get out of the crowd a little, Hannah, and then we can tell you all about it. Is this Mr. Von Arndtheim? I think I shall have to introduce myself. Will you find the way to our trunks, please? I had the hand luggage taken off at once. It's fortunate we both belong in L."

Somehow the little group made its way inside the great roofed-over place where the customs inspectors were doing their disagreeable duty to trunks and suitcases. Under a great black "L" Karl soon had Miss Lyndesay's and Frieda's trunks opened and pa.s.sed upon, while Hannah struggled to collect her wits, and control her unspeakable rapture.

Frieda was intent upon seeing that no harm was done her belongings, which were piled up about her, umbrella, hand-bags, a carryall, a shawl-strap, a brown linen roll with _Gute Reise_ embroidered on it, and a long trunk with rounded edges. She resented the inspector's opening anything, but Miss Lyndesay and Karl ignored her protest and at last the ordeal was over, and all four were seated in a carriage, driving to the club where they were to lunch with Miss Lyndesay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Sure I am not too heavy, Karl?'"--_Page 112._]

"Frieda! Frieda! Put your head back in here!" said the hara.s.sed guardian of that head, in a tone of mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and weariness. "If you get her safely to Mrs. Eldred to-night, Mr. Von Arndtheim, you will do well.

Frieda has escaped various sorts of peril on the voyage, rather by miraculous intervention than by any skill of mine as chaperon. Tell me, Hannah dear, how are your family?"

Hannah had been sitting very quietly beside her beloved lady, too dazed yet to realize her unexpected good fortune. She squeezed the gloved hand hard now and answered mechanically, her eyes telling the feelings that were surging within her.

"That is good. We left Frieda's parents well, too, and quite content after some excitement. You see, they had made plans for Frieda to come with an English friend of theirs, who was obliged only a few days before sailing-time to change her plans. Then the Professor thought he might send Frieda in the captain's care, but that distressed Frau Lange, and they were on the point of giving it up altogether when they happened to tell me about it. I had been intending to come over soon, anyhow, and could easily arrange to take their friend's place, and did so gladly. It was a much more interesting pa.s.sage than I have usually known!"

Miss Lyndesay smiled at Frieda and Frieda smiled in return, but had almost immediately to be drawn forcibly into the carriage by Karl.

"You can see enough of America without putting your head out," he suggested. "It is an interesting country, but not worth so much effort, I a.s.sure you."

They were driving down Commonwealth Avenue by this time, and even Frieda's Berlin had never shown her a pleasanter and more decorous street. Karl thought, as she leaned forward, that she was trying to get a better view of the trumpeting angels on the spire of the church they were pa.s.sing, but he was destined to be undeceived.

"I care nothing for America," said Frieda scornfully. "But I do not trust that man. I cannot see all my _Handgepack_, only the ends of two bags. Let us stop him and count them!"

"Americans don't steal!" said Hannah hotly.

"Neither do Germans!" cried Frieda, and Karl looked at the two with consternation.

"See here, _Kinder_," he put in. "This is a little too much like old times. You are two years older now, and shouldn't be so belligerent."

"Bell-i-gerent?" Frieda fumbled in her coat pocket and brought out a little red book. "I do not know that word. I will seek him."

"O, dear," moaned Hannah. "Are you going around seeking words in a dictionary all the time, Frieda? I'll put a stop to that, you'd better believe."

Miss Lyndesay watched the little scene in silence. On the way across the ocean she had wondered more than once what effect Frieda's decidedly young and aggressive nature would have on Hannah, whom she knew to be easily affected by her companions.

"Catherine will have her hands full, keeping them soothed," she thought now, and was glad when the carriage stopped before the familiar house with the mail-box between the posts, and Karl helped her out.

"B-e-l-l-i-g-e-r-e-n-t!" spelled Frieda triumphantly, stumbling out of the carriage, "'Inclined to fight; war-like; pug-na-cious--' Ah!"

Her eyes fell upon the _Handgepack_. "_Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf,--wo denn? So! funf, sechs. Es sind alle hier!_"

"There!" said Hannah. "I told you the man wouldn't steal!"

Frieda opened her lips to answer, but Karl caught up all the luggage he could carry and led the way to the steps where Miss Lyndesay was waiting, and the two girls followed him, forgetting national disputes in common interest in their surroundings, as they had done more than once before.

At luncheon in the pretty club dining-room, Frieda ate industriously and silently, as Hannah remembered seeing her do of old. Hannah herself did justice to the good dishes, though she could hardly take her eyes from Miss Lyndesay's beautiful face, and could think of nothing whatever to say on any subject. Karl and his hostess chatted pleasantly and liked each other warmly. After luncheon, Karl went out to send cablegrams, and Miss Lyndesay took the girls up to the attractive white and green room which had been a.s.signed to her.

"Can't you come out home with us?" asked Hannah wistfully. "I know Mamma would love to have you. She couldn't come in to meet the boat, because we've been at the sh.o.r.e until two days ago, and she was getting the house open; and Dad was too busy, so they sent me down with Karl. But I know if they were here, they would beg you to come. Can't you, please?"

Miss Lyndesay took Hannah into her arms and kissed the warm red cheeks.

As she did so, she saw a queer little look of annoyance cross Frieda's face, and she put out her arm and drew Frieda close, too.

"I'd like nothing better than to be with both of you for days and days.

Think how I shall miss my little roommate! But I must stay in town a day or two to do some necessary shopping. You know, I am going to spend the rest of the summer in Brookmeadow, a beautiful little village, not far from your home, Hannah. I'm going to fit up a studio there, out of an old house I own. And listen, both of you! Before Frieda goes out West, you two are to come over and spend a day and night with me in my home there. Shall you like that?"

The suns.h.i.+ne on their faces answered her, but Hannah's grew wistful again.

"You are going to be so near my home all summer, and I'm going away, myself."