ONE:The party reached Shanghai without accident, and on their arrival at that port the boys had a welcome surprise in the shape of letters from home. Their first letters from Japan had been received, and read and reread by family and friends. To judge by the words of praise that they elicited, the efforts of the youths at descriptive composition were eminently successful. Frank's mother said that if they did as well all through their journey as they had done in the beginning, they would be qualified to write a book about Japan and China; and a similar opinion of their powers was drawn from Fred's mother, who took great pride in her son. Mary and Effie composed a joint letter to Frank, to tell how much pleasure he had given them. They were somewhat anxious about the purchases, but were entirely sure everything would be correct in the end. Fred began to be a trifle jealous of Frank when he saw how much the latter enjoyed the communication from the girl who came to the railway station to see them off. He vowed to himself that before he started on another journey he would make the acquaintance of another Effie, so that he would have some one to exchange letters with.Both the boys were greatly interested in the various processes of work that were visible on shore. Groups of men were to be seen cutting reeds for fuel, or for the roofs of houses, where they make a warm thatch that keeps out the rain and snow. Other groups were gathering cotton, hemp, millet, and other products of the earth; and at several points there were men with blue hands, who were extracting indigo from the plant which[Pg 346] produces it. The plant is bruised and soaked in water till the coloring-matter is drawn out; the indigo settles to the bottom of the tub, and the water is poured off; and after being dried in the sun, the cake forms the indigo of commerce. In many places there were little stages about thirty feet high, and just large enough at the top for one man, who worked there patiently and alone. Frank could not make out the employment of these men, and neither could Fred. After puzzling awhile over the matter, they referred it to Doctor Bronson.
THREE:"Well, good Lord! don't hang back for my sake!"
THREE:Alice thought that quite lovely, even when she subsequently found out that the identical effusion had already been chanted on his arrival at the house of Mrs Fyson the day before. Julia Fyson, her most intimate friend and co-adorer of the vicar, had told her.Gradually, while still his ear was alert to catch the silence next door which would show that Norah had finished her work, his surface-faculties moved more slowly and drowsily. The page he was reading, concerning some estimate, lay long unturned before him, and his eye ceased to travel along the lines that no longer conveyed any meaning to him. It was not the ceremony of to-day that occupied him, nor the moment when all Bracebridge knew that it was he who had made this munificent gift. Those things formed but the vaguest of backgrounds, in which too a veiled hatred of his wife was mingled: in front of that grey mist was the sunlit windy down, the skylark, the tufts of blue-bell foliage, and the companionship which gave them all their significance. And how significant, he now asked himself, were these same things to his companion? Did they mean anything to her because of him? True, she had silently and unconsciously taken him into her confidence when they listened together{255} to the sky-lost song, but would not anybody else, her brother for instance, have done just as well? Did her heart want him? He had no answer to that.
THREE:Well, you air in a hurry!
