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“This ain’t no party,” Ignatius Aloysius retorted. “It’s a ‘scursion. To a party somebody gives you what you should eat; to a ‘scursion you brings it. Und, anyway, we ain’t had no rides.”

“But we heard a holler,” the guest of honour reminded him. “We heard a fierce, big holler from a lion. I don’t know do I need a ride on something what hollers. I could to have a fraid maybe.”

“Ye wouldn’t be afraid on the boats when I hold yer hand, would ye?” Patrick anxiously inquired, and Eva shyly admitted that, thus supported, she might be undismayed. To work off the pride and joy caused by this avowal, Patrick mounted the broad seat extending all around the summer-house and began to walk clatteringly upon it. The other pilgrims followed suit and the whole party stamped and danced with infinite enjoyment. Suddenly the leader halted with a cry of triumph and pointed grandly out through one of the wistaria-hung openings. Not De Soto upon the banks of the Mississippi nor Balboa above the Pacific could have felt more victorious than Patrick did as he announced:

“There’s the water-lake!”

His followers closed in upon him so impetuously that he was borne down under their charge and fell ignominiously out upon the grass. But he was hardly missed; he had served his purpose. For there, beyond the rocks and lawns and red japonicas, lay the blue and shining water-lake in its confining banks of green. And upon its softly quivering surface floated the rubber-neck-boat-birds, white and sweetly silent instead of red and screaming–and the superlative length and arched beauty of their necks surpassed the wildest of Ikey Borrachsohn’s descriptions. And relying upon the strength and politeness of these wondrous birds there were indeed “mans und ladies und boys und little girls” embarking, disembarking, and placidly weaving in and out and round about through scenes of hidden but undoubted beauty.

Over rocks and grass the army charged towards bliss unutterable, strewing their path with overturned and howling babies of prosperity who, clumsy from many nurses and much pampering, failed to make way. Past all barriers, accident or official, they pressed, nor halted to draw rein or breath until they were established, beatified, upon the waiting swan-boat.

Three minutes later they were standing outside the railings of the landing and regarding, through welling tears, the placid lake, the sunny slopes of grass and tree, the brilliant sky and the gleaming rubber-neck-boat-bird which, as Ikey described, “made go its legs,” but only, as he had omitted to mention, for money. So there they stood, seven sorrowful little figures engulfed in the rayless despair of childhood and the bitterness of poverty. For these were the children of the poor, and full well they knew that money was not to be diverted from its mission: that car-fare could not be squandered on bliss.

Becky’s woe was so strong and loud that the bitter wailings of the others served merely as its background. But Patrick cared not at all for the general despair. His remorseful eyes never strayed from the bowed figure of Eva Gonorowsky, for whose pleasure and honour he had striven so long and vainly. Slowly she conquered her sobs, slowly she raised her daisy-decked head, deliberately she blew her small pink nose, softly she approached her conquered knight, gently and all untruthfully she faltered, with yearning eyes on the majestic swans: “Don’t you have no sad feelings, Patrick. I ain’t got none. Ain’t I told you from long, how I don’t need no rubber-neck-boat-bird rides? I don’t need ’em! I don’t need em! I”–with a sob of passionate longing–“I’m got all times a awful scare over ’em. Let’s go home, Patrick. Becky needs she should see her mamma, und I guess I needs my mamma too.”