ad had
a restless night. She went out on the deck, longing for the tonic of
pure air. The morning was misty--it had rained during the night--and
clouds hung heavy and low over the city. Out from this gray smother
the city gleamed like a veiled opal. Neither Felix nor her aunt was to
be seen. When she went down to breakfast, after a brisk tramp back and
forth across the deck, she was rosy and dewy, her triumphant youth
showing no sign of her vigils. She was saying to herself: "Now I've
come, it's too idiotic not to enjoy it. I _shall_ let myself go!"
Helene attended to the ladies' packing and to the labeling and care
of the baggage. Empty-handed, care-free, feeling like a traveling
princess, Sylvia climbed down from the great steamer into a dirty,
small harbor-boat. Aunt Victoria sat down at once on the folding
camp-chair which Helene always carried for her. Sylvia and Felix stood
together at the blunt prow, watching the spectacle before them. The
clouds were lifting from the city and from Vesuvius, and from Sylvia's
mind. Her spirits rose as the boat went forward into the strange,
foreign, glowing scene.
The oily water shimmered in smooth heavings as the clumsy boat
advanced upon it. The white houses on the hills gleamed out from their
palms. As the boat came closer to the wharf, the travelers could see
the crowds of foreign-looking people, with swarthy faces and cheap,
ungraceful clothes, looking out at the boat with alert, speculative,
unwelcoming eyes. The noise of the city streets, strange to their ears
after the days of sea silence, rose clattering, like a part of the
brilliance, the sparkle. The sun broke through the clouds, poured a
flood of glory on the refulgent city, and shone hotly on the pools of
dirty water caught in the sunken spots of the uneven stone pavement.
Aunt Victoria made her way up the gang-plank to the landing dock,
achieving dignity even there. Felix sprang after her, to hand her her
chair, and Helene and Sylvia followed. Mrs. Marshall-Smith sat down
at once, opening her dark-purple parasol, the tense silk of which was
changed by the hot Southern sun into an iridescent bubble. "We will
wait here till the steward gets our trunks out," she announced."
It will be amusing to watch the people." The four made an oasis of
aristocracy in the seething, shouting, frowzy, gaudy, Southern
crowd, running about with the scrambling, undignified haste of ants,
sweating, gesticulating, their faces contort
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