At first it wasn't proposed to take me if the family went, and the thought of going through again what I had endured when seeing Di and Eagle March together, kept me from raising my voice in persuasion. It would be heartwearing to be left behind, never to know what was happening except from an occasional letter; but to be on the spot and see for myself would be heartbreaking. I wasn't quite sure which would be worse, so I left the decision to Fate; and as I said before, it was my Frenchified genius for doing hair which settled the matter. Di discussed it with Father frankly before me, and argued that not only was I cleverer than the average maid, but actually cheaper. "Besides," she finished, "Peggy dear would like to go, and she's not a bad little thing. Who knows but she might pick up something over there for herself?" "A picker up of unconsidered trifles!" the scotched, not killed minx in me couldn't resist quoting, at the suggestion that I was welcome to Di's leavings if I could bag them. But neither Father nor Di was paying the slightest attention. By superhuman efforts in borrowing, and perhaps begging (I wouldn't "put it past him"), and selling the portrait of our best-looking, worst-behaved ancestor, Father scraped up enough money to take us to America and have a little over for travelling expenses there. Further than that he did not look, for we should be living board free most of the time; and besides, something was almost sure to turn up. In December we sailed on a slow, cheap ship; and once on the other side, lived for six weeks, like the lord and ladies we were, upon friends Di had carefully collected, as if they were rare foreign stamps or postcards, in London during the past season. Most of these she had met through Eagle. She had a gorgeous time, and even I came in for plenty of fun; because it seems that a girl in America ceases to "flap" while she is still quite young. I was strictly reduced by my elders to "just sixteen," although my seventeenth birthday was upon me; but there were men in New York not above talking or tangoing with a girl of sixteen, and my hair, though only looped up flapper fashion, with a ribbon, was actually admired. I saw it in the newspapers--not the hair, but the admiration. Never were people so hospitable as those kind ones in New York, and never were houses more beautiful or more luxurious than theirs. I had never seen anything quite like them at home: but it wasn't the luxury that stirred in my heart a wondering love for America. I began to feel it from the very moment when our cheap liner brought us into the harbour, and the Statue of Liberty (about which Eagle had told me) was suddenly unveiled to my eyes from behind a curtain of silver mist. The thrill warmed my blood, and I had the sensation of being at home, as if I were coming to stay with kinsfolk; a dim but deep conviction, that I _belonged_; that there was a place for me.