Just then two people galloped along the pier below them, screaming.

‘Good Lord! It’s Howard and Annabel! How’d they ever know? Can they grab us and make us come back now? No! We’re safe!’ rattled Fred.

Out on the perilous edge of wharf beside the dock-house ran the little couple. Annabel was crying, ‘Take me with you! Please! Take me along!’

Hazel sobbed. The ship was quivering now and moving more swiftly. Howard had been waving imploringly. Now, as the black side of the ship drew definitely away, he stopped waving, and his whole face puckered with weeping.

‘My boy — my little boy that we’re deserting! He’s so unformed yet. He can’t take care of himself,’ whimpered Hazel.

The Aranjuna Queen snorted regally again and drew out into the harbour, and they could see their children only as doll-like figures, faithfully waving to the last.

‘How did we ever get here on this boat?’ marvelled the completely astonished Fredk Wm.

Front Table of Contents ← Prev Next →

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/lewis/sinclair/prodigal/chapter35.html

Last updated Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 11:57

The Prodigal Parents, by Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 36

‘Poor kid! I know — I know! Howard, the poor kid, he’s never had to take anything seriously, not even his marriage. I guess it does jar him to see us running out on him. I’ve got a hunch it’s been our fault; we never worked much at teaching him to stand on his own feet. Maybe he’ll learn now. And then someday he’ll want to get a little acquainted with himself, too, and maybe he’ll have to run away from Little Nero!’

He had been trying to comfort Hazel, down in their stateroom, but out of all his chatter nothing was distinct except ‘Poor kid’. In a few days, he assured her, they would forget Howard and enjoy being wrecked on the mobile desert island that is a ship.

‘I’m going to hate it! I’ll want to come back the minute we land! I’ll see poor Howard crying there, all the time,’ she bawled, while Fred mechanically tapped her back . . . and, no longer listening much, over her shoulder surveyed their first stateroom . . . He carefully did not tell her that there was such a thing as returning to Boston on the pilot boat.

The room, rather humble, delighted him more than a rosewood-and-tapestry suite on any cruising hotel would have done. Its stripped neatness belonged to ships. There were two beds, as promised by the travel circulars on which he had become such an authority, and between them was a bedside table with electric reading lamp, but the chairs were straight and small, the wash-bowl was of the tricky, delightful, old-fashioned sort that folded up like a shelf, and one side of the stateroom, of white-daubed bolts and steel plates curving up to an honest porthole, was frankly the side of the vessel.

‘I’m sure enough on a ship!’ he exulted.

That moment the ship rolled heavily, and his stomach did not exult.