Judy, who not much more than two weeks before had considered herself the most unfortunate and friendless of mortals, now knew that there was not such a happy person in all the world. How long the vessel took to be made fast to the pier! And then such a crowding and pushing! Every one on board seemed to have some one on the pier he had not seen for centuries and must get to immediately.
"They can't be as anxious to hug their mothers as I am, and I know they haven't any Bobbies," she complained. "And I am sure they have not been shipwrecked like you and given up for drowned by their families. They ought to let us off first."
Mr. Kean was behaving exactly as though he were at a football game. He was jumping up and down and waving and shouting, and his rooting egged Kent to make a rush for the gangway, holding Judy like a pigskin; and once on the gangplank there was nothing to do but push and be pushed by the crowd until they shot out on the pier into the arms of their waiting and eager families.
With every one talking at once, it was difficult to get any accurate knowledge about one another, but when it was all sifted out it developed that Mr. and Mrs. Kean had finally been allowed by the Imperial Government to leave Berlin, in fact, they had been encouraged to go. Mr. Kean was looked upon as a dangerous person, a lunatic at large, and they did not want the responsibility or expense of caring for him. His jokes got to be too many and serious, and when he became such an adept in evading the spy set to watch him that two had to be detailed for that duty, the powers that be evidently decided that what knowledge he possessed of the topography of Turkey did not outweigh in importance the wearing out of perfectly good soldier material. He worried the spy so that he was nothing more than skin and bones, poor fellow!
They had arrived in New York only the day before and had immediately got Molly on the long distance telephone. Of course, they knew nothing of Judy's being married, but unhesitatingly approved of the step Kent had taken and did not consider him at all high-handed. Mr. Kean, being of a most impulsive disposition, could understand it in other persons, and little Mrs. Kean was so used to her comet-like husband and daughter that she was never astonished by anything they did.