. She and Hemingway had several long talks. Then
Hemingway began to get busy. Presently he suggested, that it might
be a very good idea if Peter should go over to America for a while,
and look after those interests to which he hadn't given a thought
since he had put on a uniform. After all, Hemingway reminded him,
his uncle had placed considerable trust in him. It was only fair now
that Chadwick Champneys's wishes should come in for at least a
little attention, wasn't it?

Peter pondered this idea, and found it just. Besides, he wasn't
unwilling to go back to America now that he didn't have to face that
girl. He wondered, vaguely, what had become of her. Had she found
happiness for herself? He hoped so. Yes, he'd rather like to see New
York again. He couldn't be of any further use here now, and he
couldn't do his own work, for all inspiration seemed to have left
him. He felt empty, arid, useless.

He might just as well act upon Hemingway's suggestion, and find out
how things were over there. And after he'd seen Vandervelde, he'd go
down south and visit that tiny brown house on the cove, and the
River Swamp, and Neptune's old cabin, and the cemetery alongside the
Riverton Road. It seemed to him that he smelled the warm, salt-water
odors of the coast country again, saw the gray moss swaying in the
river breeze, heard a mocking-bird break into sudden song. A
homesick longing for Carolina came upon him. Oh, for the flat coast
country, the marsh between blue water and blue sky, the swamp bays
in flower, a Red Admiral fluttering above a thistle in a corner of
an old worm-fence!

Emma Campbell discovered this homesick longing in herself, too. Emma
was hideously afraid of the passage across, but she was willing to
risk it, just to get "over home" once more. She thought of herself
sitting in her place in Mount Zion Church, with ole Br'er Shadrach
Timmons liftin' up de tune, fat Sist' Mindy Sawyer fanning herself
with a palm-leaf fan and swaying back and forth in time to the
speretual, and busybody Deacon Williams rolling his eye to see that
nobody took too long a swallow out of the communion cup he passed
around. She thought of possum parties, with accompaniments of sweet
'taters and possum gravy. Her lip trembled, tears rolled down her
black cheeks. She had been living in the midst of air raids, her
ears had been stunned with the roar of _Big Bertha_. Now she nevuh
wanted to hear nuttin' louder dan bull-frawg in de river so