U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [228]
-114-was the first girl she'd met who real y seemed to feel painting, that she could really talk about things with. And then too she was really doing something, and so independent and told things so comical y. After al if love was going to be denied her she could build her life on a beautiful friendship.
Eveline was getting to like it so much in Chicago, she was real y disappointed when the time came to leave for the year's trip abroad that Dr. Hutchins had been plan-ing for his family for so many years. But New York and getting on the Baltic and making out the tags for their baggage and the funny smel of the staterooms made her forget al about that. They had a rough trip and the boat rol ed a good deal, but they sat at the captain's table and the captain was a jovial Englishman and kept their spirits up so that they hardly missed a meal. They landed in Liv-erpool with twentythree pieces of baggage but lost the shawlstrap that had the medicinechest in it on the way down to London and had to spend their first morning get-ting it from the Lost and Found Office at St. Pancras. In London it was very foggy. George and Eveline went to see the Elgin marbles and the Tower of London and ate their lunches in A B C restaurants and had a fine time riding in the tube. Dr. Hutchins only let them stay ten days in Paris and most of that time they were making side trips to see cathedrals. Notre Dame and Rheims and
Beauvais and Chartres with their bright glass and their smel of incense in cold stone and the tal grey longfaced statues nearly made Eveline a Catholic. They had a first class compartment reserved al the way to Florence and a hamper with cold chicken in it and many bottles of Saint Galmier mineral water and they made tea on a little alco-hol lamp. That winter it rained a lot and the vil a was chil y and the girls squabbled among themselves a good deal and Florence seemed to be ful of nothing but old English la-115-dies; stil Eveline drew from life and read Gordon Craig. She didn't know any young men and she hated the young Italians with names out of Dante that hung around Adelaide and Margaret under the delusion that they were rich heiresses. On the whole she was glad to go home with mother a little earlier than the others who were going to take a trip to Greece. They sailed from Antwerp on the Kroonland. Eveline thought it was the happiest moment of her life when she felt the deck tremble under her feet as the steamer left the dock and the long rumble of the whistle in her ears.
Her mother didn't go down to the diningsaloon the first night out so that Eveline was a little embarrassed going in to table al alone and had sat down and started eating her soup before she noticed that the young man opposite her was an American and goodlooking. He had blue eyes and crisp untidy tow hair. It was too wonderful when he turned out to be from Chicago. His name was Dirk McArthur. He'd been studying a year at Munich, but said he was get-ting out before they threw him out. He and Eveline got to be friends right away; they owned the boat after that. It was a balmy crossing for April. They played shuffle-board and decktennis and spent a lot of time in the bow watching the sleek Atlantic waves curl and break under the lunge of the ship.
One moonlight night when the moon was plunging
westward through scudding spindrift the way the. Kroon- land was plunging through the uneasy swel , they climbed up to the crowsnest. This was an adventure; Eveline didn't want to show she was scared. There was no watch and they were alone a little giddy in the snug canvas socket