doll had fallen forward so that her frizzled yellow head bounced up and
down on her fluffy blue skirts.

"Oh! Poor dollie!" exclaimed Anne to herself. "I do wish uncle--" she
caught a fleeting glimpse of him beside the workman with the canvas
bag--"if just he hadn't hurried so. How could I forget Rosy Posy? I wish
that fat girl would let me hold her baby doll. She's just dragging it
along."

Presently the Stout family, as Anne called it to herself, came
sauntering along the deck near her. She started forward, wishing to beg
leave to set the fallen doll to rights, and then stopped short, too shy
to speak to the strange girl.

A lean, sour-faced man in black bumped against her. "What an awkward
child!" he said crossly.

Anne reddened and retreated to the railing. Feeling all at once very
small and lonely, she searched the dock for her uncle but he was nowhere
to be seen.

Then a bell rang. People hurried up the gang-plank. Last of all was a
workman in blue overalls, with a soft hat jammed over his eyes. Orders
were shouted. The gang-plank was drawn in. Then the _Caronia_ wakened
up, churned the brown water into foam, crept from the dock, picked her
way among the river vessels, and sped on her ocean voyage.