wives, lovers and sweethearts, each with his or
her life and interests bound up in the life and interests of the other.
I envied them. Mine had been a solitary life, an unusual, abnormal kind
of life. No one had shared its interests and ambitions with me, no one
had spurred me on to higher endeavor, had loved with me and suffered
with me, helping me through the shadows and laughing with me in the
sunshine. No one, since Mother's death, except Hephzy and Hephzy's love
and care and sacrifice, fine as they were, were different. I had missed
something, I had missed a great deal, and now it was too late. Youth and
high endeavor and ambition had gone by; I had left them behind. I was
a solitary, queer, self-centered old bachelor, a "quahaug," as my
fellow-Bayporters called me. And to ship a quahaug around the world is
not likely to do the creature a great deal of good. If he lives through
it he is likely to be shipped home again tougher and drier and more
useless to the rest of creation than ever.

Hephzibah, too, had evidently been thinking, for she interrupted my
dismal meditations with a long sigh. I started and turned toward her.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Oh, nothin'," was the solemn answer. "I was wonderin', that's all. Just
wonderin' if he would talk English. It would be a terrible thing if
he could speak nothin' but French or a foreign language and I couldn't
understand him. But Ardelia was American and that brute of a Morley
spoke plain enough, so I suppose--"

I judged it high time to interrupt.

"Come, Hephzy," said I. "It is half-past ten. We may as well start at
once."

Broadway, seen through the cab windows, was bright enough, a blaze of
flashing signs and illuminated shop windows. But --th street, at the
foot of which the wharves of the Trans-Atlantic Steamship Company were
located, was black and dismal. It was by no means deserted, however.
Before and behind and beside us were other cabs and automobiles bound in
the same direction. Hephzy peered out at them in amazement.

"Mercy on us, Hosy!" she exclaimed. "I never saw such a procession of
carriages. They're as far ahead and as far back of us as you can see. It
is like the biggest funeral that ever was, except that they don't crawl
along the way a funeral does. I'm glad of that, anyhow. I wish I didn't
FEEL so much as if I was goin' to be buried. I don't know why I do. I
hope it isn't a presentiment."

If it was she forgot it a few minutes late