“Stay close, my dear,” Aunt Marion said with reassuring calm, grabbing her arm, casting a disapproving gaze around her at the milling throng. “It seems that Americans are true to their principle that everyone is equal from the very outset. I can see no separate process for first class. Ah well, leave this to me. Dealing with bureaucracy is one of my many talents.” She frowned disapprovingly at a fellow passenger ranting at an official. “Patience and courtesy are what will see us through, so pin that enchanting smile of yours to your face, and let us have at ’em.”

True to her word, Aunt Marion steered them quickly through a cursory medical examination and into the main rotunda building, a vast circular space where the noise of so many people talking in so many different languages was deafening and the stench from so many passengers who had been cooped up in steerage was overpowering.

“Take deep breaths, and you will quickly become accustomed to the smell,” Aunt Marion commanded as she pushed Margaret in front of her towards the registering department.

By the time their papers and baggage had been checked, and arrangements had been made to send their luggage on to the hotel which would be their temporary home, it was late morning. Emerging on the other side of the rotunda, they found themselves in a large courtyard, where passengers, children, and baggage stood in groups, looking as dazed as Margaret now felt. Exiting through another door, they were officially disembarked and on American soil.

The Battery, as it was known, was a vast space with a few sparse trees and a great deal of traffic. Conveyances of every size and description blocked the way—carriages, carts, and pedlars’ barrows. Touts proclaimed the name of the hotel or boarding-house they represented. It was here that the reunions took place. Families embraced, lovers kissed, and people laughed and cried at the same time. Babies were held up to be inspected, dogs barked, and children bounced on their toes, clinging to their mothers’ skirts. Margaret smiled at one little girl who was holding an exuberant puppy on a lead, and was rewarded with a gap-toothed grin.

Aunt Marion, meanwhile, was carefully noting down the licence number of the hansom cab. “One can never be too careful,” she said, ushering Margaret ahead of her. “Drivers,” she added with a meaningful glance at the man who had descended from the box to assist her, “are the same the world over in my experience, always eager to charge one double the going rate if they can get away with it. We are off to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, my good man, which should be no more than a fare of seventy-five cents, if I am not mistaken.”