"Awfully sorry, old man," he said. "But I was so hot at that Englishman I lost my head for a minute."
"Oh, go 'long!" returned Jerry, grinning. "Don't you suppose I was hot myself?"
He dropped on to a seat beside Mrs. Fairhew, to recover his breath.
"Mr. Taberman," said that lady, "I'm an old woman,"—it was one of Mrs. Fairhew's idiosyncrasies to call attention thus whimsically to the fact that she looked hardly more than thirty,—"I'm an old woman, and consequently I disapprove of rashness; but I don't mind saying that I like your pluck."
She looked at him in a curious way, as if he were an amusing case of arrested development, but her glance was full of kindliness.
"Thank you," Tab answered, with a smile which was too confused not to be almost a grin. "It's more a sound wind than pluck, I assure you."
"It was perfectly magnificent!" Katrine cried. "You're a perfect hero!"
They all laughed, more perhaps from the nervous reaction after the strain than from any especial amusement, and Jerry blushed more than ever.
"I'm afraid you're inclined to make a mountain out of a molehill," he said. "We don't allow heroics aboard here, you know. Jack did the only"—