upon some dreamy affair of pleasure; the steamboats that shot vehemently
across their tranquil courses seemed only gayer and vivider visions, but
not more substantial; yonder, a black sea-going steamer passed out between
the far-off islands, and at last left in the sky above those reveries of
fortification, a whiff of sombre smoke, dark and unreal as a memory of
battle; to the right, on some line of railroad, long-plumed trains arrived
and departed like pictures passed through the slide of a magic-lantern;
even a pile-driver, at work in the same direction, seemed to have no
malice in the blows which, after a loud clucking, it dealt the pile, and
one understood that it was mere conventional violence like that of a Punch
to his baby.

"Why, what a lotus-eating life this is!" said Frank, at last. "Aunt
Melissa, I don't wonder you think it's like the seaside. It's a great deal
better than the seaside. And now, just as we've entered into the spirit of
it, the time's up for the 'Rose Standish' to come and bear us from its
delights. When will the boat be in?" he asked of the Autobiographer, whom
Lucy had pointed out to him.

"Well, she's _ben_ in half an hour, now. There she lays, just outside
the 'John Romer.'"

There, to be sure, she lay, and those pleasure-takers had been so lost in
the rapture of waiting and the beauty of the scene as never to have
noticed her arrival.


II--THE AFTERNOON