further to perceive a warning scowl on the face of his Mr. James. Jimmy had not foreseen this thing, but he had a quick mind and was equal to it.
'How are you, Miss Chester? My father has come down to see me off. This is Miss Chester, dad.'
A British butler is not easily robbed of his poise, but Bayliss was frankly unequal to the sudden demand on his presence of mind. He lowered his jaw an inch or two, but spoke no word.
'Dad's a little upset at my going,' whispered Jimmy confidentially. 'He's not quite himself.'
Ann was a girl possessed not only of ready tact but of a kind heart. She had summed up Mr. Bayliss at a glance. Every line of him proclaimed him a respectable upper servant. No girl on earth could have been freer than she of snobbish prejudice, but she could not check a slight thrill of surprise and disappointment at the discovery of Jimmy's humble origin. She understood everything, and there were tears in her eyes as she turned away to avoid intruding on the last moments of the parting of father and son.
'I'll see you on the boat, Mr. Bayliss,' she said.
'Eh?' said Bayliss.
'Yes, yes,' said Jimmy. 'Good-bye till then.'
Ann walked on to her compartment. She felt as if she had just read a whole long novel, one of those chunky younger-English-novelist things. She knew the whole story as well as if it had been told to her in detail. She could see the father, the honest steady butler, living his life with but one aim, to make a gentleman of his beloved only son. Year by year he had saved. Probably he had sent the son to college. And now, with a father's blessing and the remains of a father's savings, the boy was setting out for the New World, where dollar-bills grew on trees and no one asked or cared who any one else's father might be.
There was a lump in her throat. Bayliss would have been amazed if he could have known what a figure of pathetic fineness he seemed to her. And then her thoughts turned to Jimmy, and she was aware of a glow of kindliness towards him. His father had succeeded in his life's ambition. He had produced a gentleman! How easily and simply, without a trace of snobbish shame, the young man had introduced his father. There was the right stuff in him. He was not ashamed of the humble man who had given him his chance in life. She found herself liking Jimmy amazingly...
The hands of the clock pointed to three minutes to the hour. Porters skimmed to and fro like water- beetles.
'I can't explain,' said Jimmy. 'It wasn't temporary insanity; it was necessity.'
'Very good, Mr. James. I think you had better be taking your seat now.'
'Quite right, I had. It would spoil the whole thing if they left me behind. Bayliss, did you ever see such eyes? Such hair! Look after my father while I am away. Don't let the dukes worry him. Oh, and, Bayliss'--Jimmy drew his hand from his pocket--'as one pal to another--'
Bayliss looked at the crackling piece of paper.
'I couldn't, Mr. James, I really couldn't! A five-pound note! I couldn't!'
'Nonsense! Be a sport!'
'Begging your pardon, Mr. James, I really couldn't. You cannot afford to throw away your money like this. You cannot have a great deal of it, if you will excuse me for saying so.'
'I won't do anything of the sort. Grab it! Oh, Lord, the train's starting! Good-bye, Bayliss!'
The engine gave a final shriek of farewell. The train began to slide along the platform, pursued to the last by optimistic boys offering buns for sale. It gathered speed. Jimmy, leaning out the window, was amazed at a spectacle so unusual as practically to amount to a modern miracle--the spectacled Bayliss running. The butler was not in the pink of condition, but he was striding out gallantly. He reached the door of Jimmy's compartment, and raised his hand.
'Begging your pardon, Mr. James,' he panted, 'for taking the liberty, but I really couldn't!'
He reached up and thrust something into Jimmy's hand, something crisp and crackling. Then, his mission performed, fell back and stood waving a snowy handkerchief. The train plunged into the tunnel.
Jimmy stared at the five-pound note. He was aware, like Ann farther along the train, of a lump in his throat. He put the note slowly into his pocket.
The train moved on.
CHAPTER VII
ON THE BOAT-DECK
Rising waters and a fine flying scud that whipped stingingly over the side had driven most of the passengers on the -Atlantic- to the shelter of their staterooms or to the warm stuffiness of the library. It was the fifth evening of the voyage. For five days and four nights the ship had been racing through a placid ocean on her way to Sandy Hook: but in the early hours of this afternoon the wind had shifted to the north, bringing heavy seas. Darkness had begun to fall now. The sky was a sullen black. The white crests of the rollers gleamed faintly in the dusk, and the wind sang in the ropes.
Jimmy and Ann had had the boat-deck to themselves for half an hour. Jimmy was a good sailor: it exhilarated him to fight the wind and to walk a deck that heaved and dipped and shuddered beneath his feet; but he had not expected to have Ann's company on such an evening. But she had come out of the saloon entrance, her small face framed in a hood and her slim body shapeless beneath a great cloak, and joined him in his walk.
Jimmy was in a mood of exaltation. He had passed the last few days in a condition of intermittent melancholy, consequent on the discovery that he was not the only man on board the -Atlantic- who desired the society of Ann as an alleviation of the tedium of an ocean voyage. The world, when he embarked on this venture, had consisted so exclusively of Ann and himself that, until the ship was well on its way to Queenstown, he had not conceived the possibility of intrusive males forcing their unwelcome attentions on her. And it had added bitterness to the bitter awakening that their attentions did not appear to be at all unwelcome. Almost immediately after breakfast on the very first day, a creature with a small black moustache and shining teeth had descended upon Ann and, vocal with surprise and pleasure at meeting her again--he claimed, damn him!, to have met her before at Palm Beach, Bar Harbor, and a dozen other places--had carried her off to play an idiotic game known as shuffle-board. Nor was this
