was waiting for us!" cried Lucile, joyfully. "We
don't deserve our blessings."

"Of course you don't," said a cheerful voice behind them. "How's this for
a day?"

"That's just what we've been raving about," said Jessie, as she hugged
her cousin ecstatically.

"Hey, look out, young lady!" cautioned Jack, gaily. "Not everybody on
board knows we're related, remember."

"Well, what they don't know won't hurt them," she retorted. "Besides, I'd
hug the ship's cook to-day if he happened to be anywhere around."

"I'm flattered!" laughed Jack, just as Phil greeted him with a bang on
the shoulder that Lucile declared could be heard in the galley.

"Say, let's play 'ring around a rosy,'" he suggested. "We've got to do
something to celebrate."

"How exciting!" Jessie began, but before she could utter further protest
she was jerked into the circle and was soon whirling round madly with the
rest until they had to stop from exhaustion and laughter.

"It's good we stopped just when we did," said Lucile, peeping around a
corner of the cabin. "I see old lady Banks in the distance. 'Pray, and
may I inquire the cause of all this frivolity?'" and she imitated the old
lady so perfectly that they went off into gales of laughter.

"You've sure missed your vocation, Lucile," said Jack, when they stopped
to breathe.

"That's what we all tell her," agreed Evelyn. "In Burleigh----"

"Doesn't it make me homesick, just to think of it!" exclaimed Jessie.

"You haven't long to wait now," cried Lucile, springing to her feet and
searching the sky-line as though she hoped to see beyond it. "A few hours
more, and--the harbor!"

Great crowds thronged the deck of the steamer. It had been announced that
fifteen minutes more would bring them in sight of land--their land. Eyes,
old and young, were straining for that first glimpse of a country never
so dear to them as now.

"There it is! It's there, it's there!" came in excited tones from
different parts of the deck, the shrill tones of women and children
mingling with the deeper voices of men.

"Yes, now you can see it," Mr. Payton was saying. "That tiny
speck--that's America."

The word sped like magic through the crowd, breaking the tension. They
all went mad with joy. Men shook hands with perfect strangers; women
hugged each other, murmuring incoherently, and mothers gathered their
little ones to them, weeping openly.

"Hello, Lucy; that you? Where did you go, anyway?" said Jessie,
sur