and
surrounded as you are by a cosmopolitan group of people, passes as
delightfully as a brief stay at the ocean side.

The passage of the "Campania" from Sandy Hook Light to Queenstown was
made in less than five and one-half days, 5 days, 10 hours, and 47
minutes, or at an average speed of 21.82 knots per hour, the highest
day's run being 548 knots. At Queenstown Colonel Harris received
telegrams and letters from his family saying that they would meet him at
Leamington, and that Alfonso would meet his father at Liverpool.

Reuben Harris wired his wife when his party expected to arrive. It was
ten o'clock in the morning when the S.S. "Campania" arrived in the Mersey
off Alexandra dock, and the company's tender promptly delivered the
passengers on the Liverpool Landing Stage.

Gertrude was first to single out Alfonso, whose handkerchief waved a
brother's welcome to the old world. Alfonso was the first to cross the
gangway to the tender, and rushed to his friends. The greeting was
mutually cordial. The father embraced his boy, for he loved him much and
still cherished a secret hope that his only son might yet turn his mind
to business. Alfonso seemed specially pleased that George and his sister
May had come, for he had frequently met May Ingram and her singing had
often charmed him.

May was about his own age. As Alfonso helped her down the gangway to the
deck, he thought he had never seen her look so pretty. She was about the
size of his sister Lucille; slender, erect, and in her movements she was
as graceful as the swaying willows. May's face was oval like that of
her English mother. She had an abundance of brown hair, her eyes were
brilliant, and her complexion, bronzed by the sea-breezes, had a pink
under-coloring that increased her beauty. If Alfonso's eyes were fixed on
her a moment longer than custom allows, perhaps he was excusable, for
portrait painting was his hobby, and he fancied that he knew a beautiful
face.

Alfonso was all attention to his friends in clearing the baggage through
the customs and getting checks for Leamington. After lunch, at the fine
railway hotel, the two o'clock express from Lime Street station was
taken, and Colonel Harris and party became loud in their praises of John
Bull's Island, as they sped on, via Coventry with her three tall spires,
to the fashionable Spa, where the Harris family were again to be
reunited. It was six o'clock when Alfonso alighted on the platform.
"Here they