changing scene. It was
like a moving-picture show, where one group chased away another.
Swift-footed stewards and stewardesses moved busily to and fro. In twos
and threes and larger groups, people were saying good-bys, some
laughing, some tearful. Messenger boys were delivering letters and
parcels. Oncoming passengers were jostling one another. Porters with
armfuls of bags and bundles were getting in and out of the way. Trunks
and boxes were being lowered into the hold. Anne tried to find her own
small trunk. There it was. No! it was that--or was it the one below?
Dear me! How many just-alike brown canvas trunks were there in the
world? And how many people! These must be the people that on other days
thronged the up-town streets. Broadway, she thought, must look lonesome
to-day.

Every minute increased the crowd and the confusion.

There came a tall, raw-boned man with two heavy travelling bags,
following a stout woman dressed in rustling purple-red silk. She spoke
in a shrill voice: "Sure all my trunks are here? The little black one?
And the box? And you got the extra steamer rug? Ed-ward! And I
dis-tinct-ly told you--"

"The very best possible. Positively the most satisfactory arrangements
ever made for a party our size." This a brisk little man with a
smile-wrinkled face was saying to several women trotting behind him,
each wearing blue or black serge, each lugging a suit-case.

A porter was wheeling an invalid chair toward the gang-plank. By its
side walked a gentlewoman whom fanciful little Anne likened to a
partridge. In fact, with her bright eyes and quick movements, she was
not unlike a plump, brown-coated bird.

She fluttered toward the chair and said in a sweet, chirpy voice:
"Comfortable, Emily? Lean a little forward and let me put this pillow
under your shoulders. There, dear! That's better, I'm sure. Just a
little while longer. How nicely you are standing the journey!"

A man in rough clothes stopped to exchange parting words with a youth in
paint-splotched overalls.

--"Take it kind ye're here to see me off. I been a saying to mesilf four
year I'd get back to see the folks in the ould counthry. And here I am
at last wid me trunk in me hand--" holding out a bulging canvas bag.
"Maybe so I'll bring more luggage back. There's a tidy girl I used to
know--"

Beyond this man, Anne's roving eyes caught a glimpse of a familiar,
gray-clad figure. She waved her hand eagerly but it attracted no
greeting i