A Dear Little Girl's Summer Holidays Part 21

"I am so mixed up in my feelings," said Edna in confidence to Dorothy when they were seated in the train. "I want awfully to see them all at home, but yet I hate to leave here."

"I feel exactly that way myself," Dorothy confessed. "But even if we weren't going to-day we couldn't stay very long, for the house will be closed next week, and we shouldn't want to stay there alone."

Edna admitted that this was true, and then Jennie came over to sit with them and they talked of the things they were to see and the places they were to go in the next two days.

"I think we will go to the Old North Church first," said Mrs. Ramsey as they left the train. "We will send the baggage to the hotel, then we will not have to come to this part of the city again."

"Oh, what a funny place," said Jennie, as they took their way through streets where queer-looking foreigners congregated.

"I think the people are funnier than the place," remarked Edna.

"They are mostly Polish or Russian Jews," Mrs. Ramsey told her. "It is not the neighborhood it was in Paul Revere's day. Here is the old church."

The children looked with awe and reverence at the ancient edifice, and, going inside, were shown some of the Revolutionary relics which were there on exhibition. Just as they were coming out they met a young man coming in.

"Hallo!" he cried in surprise.

"Why if it isn't Ben," cried Edna delightedly. "Why Ben Barker how did you get here?"

"I might ask you the same question," he replied.

"We came by train."

"And I came by boat. I thought it was a shame to be so near this city and not stop off to see a few things, so I got my friends to let me off and left the yacht to go on to New York while I should stop here for couple of days."

"That is just what we are going to do."

"Good! then maybe we can join forces."

"That would suit me nicely," put in Mrs. Ramsey. "My husband will not be down till to-morrow evening in time to take the train for Fall River, and meantime I have these three little girls on my hands and no man to look after us, so if you will come along to see about tickets and things I should be pleased."

So Ben fell into line to the great satisfaction of all. "Where were you going next?" he asked.

"As long as it is such a pleasant day I thought we'd better make sure of Lexington and Concord, and leave the places nearer at hand till to-morrow. Of course you will want to visit Harvard, and the children have talked of the gla.s.s flowers so much that they must see them. While you are visiting other points more interesting to you, we will look at the flowers."

"Then, ho, for Lexington! We must take a subway car, and seek the 'rude bridge' where 'the embattled farmers stood to fire the shot heard 'round the world.'"

The little girls did not quite understand this till Emerson's poem was explained to them.

"Oh, I do want to see the place where the British general said: 'Disperse, ye rebels,'" cried Dorothy.

"Then we'd better trot right along," said Ben. "You and I will go ahead, Mrs. Ramsey, and lead the way."

But Jennie wanted to walk with her mother too, and so the other two little girls dropped behind to pursue their way through the crooked streets where odd sights met their eyes; queerly dressed women and children jostled them; at the doors of houses swarthy faces and strange forms appeared. The shop windows held many things the children had never seen before, and once or twice they stopped to see what these very unusual articles could be.

"Do look here, Edna," said Dorothy as they were pa.s.sing one particularly foreign looking place. "I must see what those funny things are," and she turned back, Edna following her.

"We mustn't stop," said Edna, "for we might lose the others."

"Oh, just for a second. They are right ahead and we can't miss them."

But they could not decide what the funny things were and so went on.

"Why, where are Ben and Mrs. Ramsey?" said Edna in alarm. "I saw them a minute ago."

"They were right ahead of us when we stopped," said Dorothy, hastening her steps. "They must have turned the corner."

They hurried along as fast as possible, turning the corner and looking around. But there was no sign of their friends, and after they had gone a short distance, "we'd better go back," Dorothy said.

They tried to retrace their steps, but it was a very crooked street with others leading from it, and in their bewilderment they took the wrong turning, so that in a few minutes they were hopelessly beyond any possibility of finding their companions. They looked at one another confronted by a problem.

"What shall we do?" at last said Edna in a weak voice.

With one consent they stood still and looked around as if hoping to see a familiar face, but here was a denser crowd of foreigners and only the dark eyes of Russians and Poles met theirs.

"I don't like it a bit here," said Dorothy as a hideous old woman leered down at them.

"Neither do I," quavered Edna. "I think we'd better ask our way back to the church and start from there."

They accosted the first person they saw, who happened to be a young girl, but at their question she shook her head. "No unnystan," she replied.

The next one questioned nodded and began to jabber something in a foreign language, so it was the children's turn to say, "No unnystan."

The next of whom they inquired the way spoke brokenly, but said he would put them on the right track, and under his guidance they managed to reach the church, and here they met a man in clerical dress who looked down at them with a smile. "Did you come to see the old church?"

he asked. "I am going in, and perhaps you would like to come with me."

"We have been here once this morning," Dorothy told him, "but we have lost our friends and don't know which way to go."

"Where were they going?"

"Why, I don't know, I think to the subway."

"Oh, that is easy to find. I will call a policeman and he will take you along and show you." He looked up and down the street and finally saw a policeman in the distance, and he was coming toward them.

"There he is," said the man. "Just wait till he comes up. I say, Mike,"

he called to the policeman, "just show these little girls the way to the subway, won't you? They have turned the wrong way and are out of their bearings." He smiled down on the children, lifted his hat and pa.s.sed into the church, leaving the children with the policeman.

"Which way was you going?" asked the policeman pleasantly.

"We were going to Lexington," Edna told him.

"Then I'll go with you to the end of my beat and pa.s.s you along, so's you'll get on at the right place."

They walked quietly along wondering a little, as pa.s.sers-by looked at them curiously, if it was supposed they were under arrest. They felt a good deal worried, but had a vague idea that the others would wait for them at the subway, wherever that might be.

True to his word the policeman turned them over to another of his order when they had reached the end of his beat, and this one piloted them safely to the entrance of the subway. They had said so confidently that they were going to Lexington that neither man questioned, but that they knew the way once they had reached the proper station.

They descended the steps with some misgivings, for if Mrs. Ramsey and Ben were not there what was to be done next? They had never been in the subway before for Mrs. Ramsey had wanted them to see the city streets when they had visited the city in the summer, and had taken a taxicab to go up town. Mr. Ramsey had done the same when they arrived on their journey in his company. A most bewildering place they found this same subway to be, full of people rus.h.i.+ng for trains, noisy from the whizzing of cars from out of cavernous dark places and departing into equally unknown darkness. It seemed terrible to the two little girls and they were on the verge of tears. Impossible to find anyone in such a place as this. Best to get out of it as speedily as they could.

The roaring of pa.s.sing trains was so confusing, the jostling of the crowd was so unpleasant that the children held fast to one another and hurried up the steps and into the open air.

"Oh, dear," sighed Edna.