"It might be worse," suggested the lawyer dryly.
"Yes. I've made inquiries. But what can a man know about things?" The great man's regard drifted out into the gray distance of the open sea. "Ah, if I had her mother back again!"
"The boy is fine and honorable and manful, Wayne," said the old lawyer. "To be sure, you'll never make a Wall Street dollar-hound out of him—"
"Heaven knows I don't want to."
"But he'll play his part in the world and play it well. I've come to think a good deal of that boy. I wish I were as sure of the girl."
"Cecily? Don't you worry about her." The father chuckled pridefully. "She's got stuff in her. I'd trust her to start the world with as I did with her mother."
What of Little Miss Grouch, while all these momentous happenings were in progress? Events had piled up on her sturdy little nerves rather too fast even for their youthful strength. The emotional turmoil of which the Tyro was the cause, the tension of meeting her father again, and, on top of these, the startling occurrences on the deck of the tender had stretched her endurance a little beyond its limit, and it was with a sense of grateful refuge that she had betaken herself to the hospitality of Lady Guenn's cabin. What transpired between the two women is no matter for the pen of a masculine chronicler. Suffice it to note that Lord Guenn, surcharged with instructions to be casual, set out to find the Tyro, and, having found him, blurted out:—
"I say, Smith, Cecily's in our cabin. If I were you I'd lose no time getting there. It's the only one on the port side aft."
No time was lost by the Tyro. He found Cecily alone. At sight of her face, his heart gave one painful thump, and shriveled up.
"You've been crying," he said.