"What are you sorry for?"
"Your disappointment. Still, disappointment is good for the soul. Anyway, I'm not going to quarrel with you now. You're too brutal. I think I'm feeling better. How do I look?"
"Like a perfect wond—hum!" broke off the Tyro, nearly choking over his sudden recollection of the terms of acquaintance. "I can't see any improvement."
"Perhaps walking would help. They say the plainest face looks better under the stimulus of exercise. Is your foot fit to walk on?"
"It's fit for me to walk on," said the Tyro cautiously.
"Come along, then," and she set out at a brisk, swinging stride which told its own tale of pulsing life and joyous energy. After half a dozen turns, she paused to lean over the rail which shuts off the carefully caged creatures of the steerage from the superior above.
"My grandfather came over steerage," she remarked casually. "I don't think I should like it."
A big-eyed baby, in its mother's sturdy arms below, caught sight of her and crowed with delight, stretching up its arms.
"Oh," she cried with a little intake of the breath, "look at that adorable baby!"
As she spoke the Tyro surprised in her face a change; a look of infinite wistfulness and tenderness, the yearning of the eternal mother that rises in every true woman when she gazes upon the child that might have been her own; and suddenly a great longing surged over his soul and mastered him for the moment. But the baby was lisping something in German.