"I want to know!" cried Lydia. She followed Thomas into her state-
room. "Well, well! They do seem to have thought of everything!"

"I should say so," exulted the boy. "Look here!" He showed her a
little niche near the head of the berth strongly framed with glass,
in which a lamp was made fast. "Light up, you know, when you want
to read, or feel kind of lonesome." Lydia clasped her hands in
pleasure and amaze. "Oh, I tell you Captain Jenness meant to have
things about right. The other state-rooms don't begin to come up to
this." He dashed out in his zeal, and opened their doors, that she
might triumph in the superiority of her accommodations without delay.
These rooms were cramped together on one side; Lydia's was in a
comparatively ample corner by itself.

She went on unpacking her trunk, and the boy again took his place near
her, in the same attitude as before. "I tell you," he said, "I shall
like to see you with that silk on. Have you got any other nice ones?"

"No; only this I'm wearing," answered Lydia, half amused and half
honest in her sympathy with his ardor about her finery. "They said not
to bring many clothes; they would be cheaper over there." She had now
reached the bottom of her trunk. She knew by the clock that her
grandfather could hardly have left the city on his journey home, but
the interval of time since she had parted with him seemed vast. It was
as if she had started to Boston in a former life; the history of the
choosing and cutting and making of these clothes was like a dream of
preexistence. She had never had so many things new at once, and it had
been a great outlay, but her aunt Maria had made the money go as far
as possible, and had spent it with that native taste, that genius for
dress, which sometimes strikes the summer boarder in the sempstresses