There is another quality that must crown this development of the childlike character—it is sympathy—that wide and warm sympathy which knows no growing old, and which is the fruition of our childhood’s eager freshness. Best of all, in picking up those old treasures that we carelessly dropped by the way when the Golden Age was ending, we may yet be, all unconsciously, very near the paradise-garden where once we walked, not knowing our good-fortune, and but half able to enjoy it. IN ALL SHADES. CHAPTER VIII. For a few minutes, they stood looking blankly at one another in mute astonishment, turning over and comparing the two telegrams together with undecided minds; then at last Nora broke the silence. ‘I tell you what it is,’ she said, with an air of profound wisdom; ‘they must have got an epidemic of yellow fever over in Trinidad—they’re always having it, you know, and nobody minds it, unless of course they die of it, and even then I daresay they don’t think much about it. But papa and Mr Hawthorn must be afraid that if we come out now, fresh from England, we may all of us get it.’ Edward looked once more at the telegrams very dubiously. ‘I don’t think that’ll do, Miss Dupuy,’ he said, after re-reading them with a legal scrutiny. ‘You see, your father says: “On no account go on board the _Severn_.” Evidently, it’s this particular ship he has an objection to; and perhaps my father’s objection may be exactly the same. It’s very singular—very mysterious!’ ‘Do you think,’ Marian suggested, ‘there can be anything wrong with the vessel or the machinery? You know, they _do_ say, Edward, that some ship-owners send ships to sea that aren’t at all safe or seaworthy. I read such a dreadful article about it a little while ago in one of the papers. Perhaps they think the _Severn_ may go to the bottom.’ ‘Or else that there’s dynamite on board,’ Nora put in; ‘or a clockwork thing like the one somebody was going to blow up that steamer with at Hamburg, once, you remember! Oh, my dear, the bare idea of it makes me quite shudder! Fancy being blown out of your berth, at dead of night, into the nasty cold stormy water, and having a shark bite you in two across the waist before you were really well awake, and had begun properly to realise the situation!’ ‘Not very likely, either of them,’ Edward said. ‘This is a new ship, one of the very best on the line, and perfectly safe, except of course in a hurricane, when anything on earth is liable to go down; so that can’t possibly be Mr Dupuy’s objection to the _Severn_.—And as to the clockwork, you know, Nora, the people who put those things on board steamers, if there are any, don’t telegraph out to give warning beforehand to the friends of passengers on the other side of the Atlantic. No; for my part, I can’t at all understand it. It’s a perfect mystery to me, and I give it up entirely.’ ‘Well, what do you mean to do, dear?’ Marian asked anxiously. ‘Go back at once, or go on in spite of it?’