It was delightful to see them together, Jerome and the baby. He was still content, for the most part, just to gaze down at the tiny fellow as he lay in the cheap little cradle they had purchased in Australia. So entirely and even ludicrously undemonstrative was this attitude that the troupers accused the proud father of being secretly afraid of his offspring. Much more convincing, beams and all, was the attitude of Lili, who, in her impetuous way, knew how to make a fuss over a little bundle of flannel and lace as successfully as over a man; so that the more conventional picture of mother and child never failed to evoke an abundance of enthusiastic appreciation.
“Look there—isn’t that sweet?” the touched impresario would exclaim.
And everybody else thought so too. Even the comedian was awed by the picture.
Everybody thought her a delightful mother. However, the subtler picture was Jerome, a now responsible and experienced man, sitting beside his baby’s cradle, looking down into the tiny face as though he could never look enough, and when no one was around, letting the fingers of a tiny hand close about one of his fingers, thrust down so gently. And once he cautiously stooped and kissed the baby, and felt a thrill the like of which he had never known before in all his life.
II
At Manila where the Skipping Goone laid by three weeks, it was learned that Captain Utterbourne had just been there and departed. A few hours sooner, indeed, and they would have encountered him.
As a matter of fact, it was he who had brought Flora down and deposited her—with express understanding, however, that she was to take a regular steamer home. “One could hardly expect me to go into tourist traffic this late in life, could one?” he asked sweetly, his cold lips moving with dry mirth. And he delicately refrained from guessing the romantic complexion of her sudden longing to visit Manila.
Yes, the Star of Troy was roving about somewhere in this part of the world, and the intelligence seemed vaguely to upset the master of the Skipping Goone. A look of the satellite came into his green eyes, and he felt somehow less in control, even while he snarled the more convincingly and had perhaps never looked so much like an admiral.
Manila was kind indeed to Mr. Curry and his songbirds, and the engagement was by no means unprosperous. Then they were under way once more, bound now for Borneo. However, though brief, it was to prove a voyage more packed with incident than any thus far.
The winds were mostly head winds, extremely variable, and much time was lost. During one whole day the wind dropped almost entirely, and rain poured down. The glass ran low. The air was damp and unseasonably chilly, with restless little gusts down the murk of the China sea. In the midst of all this the baby managed to contract a cold.