It was still a week’s sailing before the American shore would be reached, and AH-NI-GHI´-TO began to grow eager to get home, where she had left her family of dolls, taking only her eldest with her, for, she said, “they must miss a mother’s care, poor things, and I am homesick for them too. I wonder what they will say to the new Eskimo sister and brother that I am bringing to them. I hope they will be pleased, even if the new children are not beauties. Then, too, I am so anxious to tell all my dear ones what a good time I have had, and to show them my new presents and also to give them the curious things I have brought from the Snowland for them.” At last the shore was in sight, and toward evening it was reached. That night AH-NI-GHI´-TO slept in a hotel with her father and mother; and very queer it felt to sleep in a bed that did not rock to and fro, and to wake in the night and not hear the steady, even pulsing of the engine, together with the swish of the waves against the ship’s sides, which had been her steady company for nearly three months. [Illustration: _Home Again_] There was still a long journey to be made on the railroad, and AH-NI-GHI´-TO thought it would never end. But at last, with a clanging of bells and a puffing of steam, the long dusty train rolled into the station, and there among the eager crowd AH-NI-GHI´-TO saw her “Tante” and the gentle kindly face of “dear old Grossma,” both glad to have their baby back again safe and well. Of course there was much to hear and much to tell; presents to give, friends to see, and her own family of dolls to look after and the new ones to be introduced, until when night came it was a very tired AH-NI-GHI´-TO that mother tucked away in the little white bed. “Good night, mother dear,” she said. “I have had a very nice time, and I am glad to have seen the Snowland again, and ‘Billy-Bah,’ and the little brown Eskimos, and those dear little children who gave me the Eskimo doll, even if they could not speak English or German. The christening of the meteorite was great fun, and I liked the big ship and our funny little room, and I liked my big brothers on the ship; but I like Grossma’s house the very best of all, don’t you?” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. End of Project Gutenberg's The Snow Baby, by Josephine Diebitsch Peary