Life aboard the Skipping Goone was much sobered by the death of the little baby. Lili, though her grief was genuine enough, found a vague refuge in knowing herself a center of sympathetic interest; but for a time Jerome was inconsolable.
However, though life was saddened, it must nevertheless go on. Some of the principal songbirds were preening themselves in anticipation of the furor they hoped to create in Africa. Fortunes had been made there. And you never could tell who might be listening. The excitement all round was naturally rendered much more pointed by the wonderful thing that had happened to Miss Valentine in Manila. It had come at last. She had received a cable message from America advising her that a private hearing was being arranged in Cape Town, and stating that a contract offer might depend on the verdict. The cable was signed by a name of such awful significance that the enraptured recipient trembled violently whenever she pronounced it, even to herself.
In her more confident moments Miss Valentine assured herself (and every one else, for that matter) that her reputation and fortune were already firmly established; but, being only human, and not so very far along, even yet, from the lowliness of her choir-singing days in Galesburg, the fortunate artist also experienced moments when she felt doomed to certain disaster. Something would be sure to go wrong. “I’ll be so nervous I can’t sing a note!” she confided to the contralto. But everybody told her of course she’d sing all right, and everybody was vociferous in congratulation exactly in proportion to the acuteness of his or her secret envy.
Mr. Curry smiled, then sighed. The bolt had fallen, though not, after all, quite from the blue. Bolts of this sort never did fall altogether from the blue any more. It only meant that in a little while another ornament would find its way on to his already crowded hands.
Naturally Miss Valentine spent nearly all of her time at the dinky piano in the cabin they called their “assembly saloon.” Early and late she worked, and swore a great deal under her breath, or sometimes proclaimingly, if the note happened to be very bad, and sometimes she would hurl her music on the floor and stamp on it, for she was a very temperamental artist indeed. But when things seemed to be going well, then she would be just lovely to every one, and say nice things like this: “I think you have one of the nicest contralto voices I’ve ever heard, dear,” or: “Now I’ve got those wretched Cs and D’s where I want them, I’m going to sit down and knit all day on a sweater for poor little Lili.”
One day she came running up on deck to Mr. Curry, crying miserably: “It’s gone! I can’t sing a single note any more that doesn’t sound like a tin whistle, and I feel just like drowning myself!”
“What’s all this?” asked the impresario cheerily.
“I tell you I can’t even get up to a B♭ without screeching,” she wailed, weeping copiously into a very small handkerchief. “And I think it’s just a shame, with the hearing so close!” Some of the songbirds began whispering a little.
Mr. Curry gave her one of his finest smiles. “You’ve just gotten yourself all tied up into about a hundred knots, that’s all. Don’t tell me it’s not so—can’t I see? Haven’t I got eyes? Now listen to me, my dear child. We’re going to walk up and down here on deck a few turns, and you’re going to take some very deep breaths of this sea air—oh, not little sniffs like that! What do you think you are, a rabbit? And now,” he ended confidently, “we’ll see what’s wrong in mighty short order!”