As for the boy, God was good to have brought him into her life.
Meanwhile, Baltazar walked home to Godalming with Quong Ho in gay spirits. It was just like the modern young Englishman to shy at the depths and attack the surface. And, after all, as a more alert glance assured him, the surface of Quong Ho deserved the censure of any reasonable being. One could almost hear his garments flap in the autumn wind.
“I fear,” said Quong Ho apologetically, “that my care in selecting this costume was not sufficiently meticulous.”
“Godfrey’ll soon put that right,” laughed Baltazar. “Anyhow, it’s the man inside the clothes that matters.”
And when he came to think of it, he perceived that the man inside had had little opportunity of revealing himself, he, Baltazar, having done the talking for the two of them. Quong Ho had comported himself very ceremoniously. His manners, though somewhat florid in English eyes, had been unexceptionable, devoid of self-consciousness and awkward attempts at imitation. He had responded politely to the conventional questions of Marcelle and Godfrey, but there his conversation had stopped. Of the rare gem presented to them they had no notion. Never mind. Once let Quong Ho give them a taste of his quality, and they could not choose but take him to their bosoms.
Which, by the end of the Friday shopping excursion, was an accomplished fact.
Now that Marcelle had assumed responsibility, Godfrey, after the way of man, regarded the attiring of Quong Ho as a glorious jest. His bright influence melted Quong Ho’s Oriental reserve. Encouraged to talk, he gave them sidelights on the life at Spendale Farm which neither had suspected. His description, in his formal, unhumorous English, of the boxing lessons, delighted Godfrey.
“The old man must be a good sport,” he remarked to Marcelle.
“Ah!” said Quong Ho, bending forward—they were in the train—“A ‘sport’ is a term of which I have long desired to know the significance. Will you have the gracious kindness to expound it?”
“Lord! That’s rather a teaser,” said Godfrey. “I suppose a sport is a chap that can do everything and says nothing, and doesn’t care a damn for anything.”