|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
|
The boat now began, with heavy groans, like some vast, tired monster, to pre- pare to push up among the multiplied steamers at the levee. Eva joyously pointed out the various spires, domes, and way-marks, by which she recognized her na- tive city. “Yes, yes, dear; very fine,” said Miss Ophelia. “But mercy on us! the boat has stopped! where is your father?” And now ensued the usual turmoil of landing-waiters running twenty ways at once-men tugging trunks, carpet-bags, boxes-women anxiously calling to their children, and everybody crowding in a dense mass to the plank towards the land- ing. Miss Ophelia seated herself resolutely on the lately vanquished trunk, and marshalling all her goods and chattels in fine military order, seemed resolved to defend them to the last. “Shall I take your trunk, ma’am?” “Shall I take your baggage?” “Let me ‘tend to your baggage, Missis?” “Shan’t I carry out these yer, Missis?” rained down upon her unheeded. She sat with grim determination, upright as a darning-needle stuck in a board, holding on her bundle of umbrella and parasols, and replying with a determination that was enough to strike dismay even into a hackman, won- dering to Eva, in each interval, “what upon earth her papa could be thinking of; he couldn’t have fallen over, now,- but something must have happened;”- and just as she had begun to work herself into a real distress, he came up, with his usually careless motion, and giving Eva a quarter of the orange he was eating, said, |
