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CHAPTER TWELVE.
A FOREIGN MISSION
In the next few years, God was indeed good to John Schuyler. Health he kept; honors came to him, and the respect of men and of women. There were those who loved him, many; and of those who hated him there were a few; which is well, inasmuch as the hatred of some men may be the highest praise—the highest favor—that they have to bestow.
A child came to them, at length—to him and to the daughter of Jimmy Blair; and that child was as like to the daughter of Jimmy Blair as the daughter had been like her mother.
A part of the time they lived in the city; but most of their days were spent out at the Larchmont place, on the Sound, that John Stuyvesant Schuyler had built so long ago. And there they were very, very happy.
The quiet, peaceful beauty of "Grey Rocks" more than ever appealed to the soul of Tom Blake as he stood upon the bridge of his yacht, "The Vagrant," and watched the ever-enlarging lawn apparently rush toward him. He closed his eyes, a little. The sun was very bright…. He turned toward the Long Island shore, hazy and unreal in the mists of the morning…. When he turned back again, the huge, sea-going craft, a thing of glistening white and shining brass, was making a wide, graceful sweep in the churning water, and the house had ceased to rush down upon him. It now stood inviting, beckoning, as close at hand as it were safe to be.
A launch was lowered, and the owner's gangway dropped. And in another moment, Blake stood, balancing himself nicely against the rolling of the little craft, as it rushed through the blue-gray water toward the landing pier at the foot of the velvet lawn.
Like one who, in haste, yet longs to loiter Blake made his way across the sward to where, jutting out from a corner of the house, a tiny bay window thrust itself forth among a confusion of tangled nasturtiums, copper- colored, yellow, crimson son. With the privileged assurance of one long known and long loved, he thrust open the left hand window, which extended to the ground, and entered the room.
There came a little, delighted cry of surprise; a rather uncertain, "Oh, Mr. Tom!" and in another instant he was enveloped in a tiny cloud of lace and ribbons and primly starched linen while two bare, brown little legs waved wildly about his breast, a pair of very sticky lips were set against his own, and his neck found itself in the clasp of tiny fingers that had known orange-juice and oat-meal and sugar—and possibly jam— since they had had intimate association of water.