ther looked impressed.
But she said, doubtfully, "Oh, do you think we better, Father? We'll be
traveling and all--"

"Yes-sir-ee! We're going to a movie, and then we're going to have a
banana split, and I'm going to carry my cane and smoke a seegar. You
know mighty well you like the movies as well as I do."

"Acting up like a young smarty!" Mother said, but she obediently put on
her hat--Lord, no, not the new small hat; that was kept to impress West
Skipsit, Massachusetts--and as she trotted to the movies beside him, the
two of them like solemn white puppies venturing away from their mother,
she occasionally looked admiringly up, a whole inch up, at her hero.

CHAPTER II

They took the steamer for Massachusetts at five o'clock. When the band
started to play, when Mother feared that a ferry was going to collide
with them, when beautiful youths in boating hats popped out of
state-rooms like chorus-men in a musical comedy, when children banged
small sand-pails, when the steamer rounded the dream-castles of lower
New York, when it seemed inconceivable that the flag-staff could get
under Brooklyn Bridge--which didn't clear it by much more than a hundred
feet--when a totally new New York of factories and docks, of steamers
bound for Ceylon and yachts bound for Newport, was revealed to these old
New-Yorkers--then Mother mingled a terrific apprehension regarding ships
and water with a palpitating excitement over sailing into the freedom
which these two gray-haired children had longed for all their lives, and
had found during two weeks of each year.

Father was perfectly tremendous. He apprehensive? Why, he might have
been the original man to go down to the sea in ships. Mother wailed that
all the deck-chairs had been taken; Father found mountains of chairs and
flipped a couple of them open as though he were a steward with service
stripes. He was simply immense in his manner of thrusting Mother and
himself and his chairs and a mound of shawls and coats into the midst of
the crowd gathered at the bow. He noted Mother's nervousness and
observed, casually, "Mighty safe, these boats. Like ferries. Safer 'n
trains. Yes, they're safer 'n staying home in bed, what with burgulars
and fires and everything."

"Oh, do you really think they are safe?" breathed Mother, comforted.

Admirable though Father was, he couldn't sit still. He was wearing a
decorative new traveling cap, very smart and extensive and expensive,
shaped l