“Trust Rick to make a graceful entrance,” he observed. “Say, Miss Folger, if you’re able to walk, His Excellency wants to see you in his cabin. He asked me to explain that he would have come to you, but he’s not allowed to leave his chair by the doctor, here. You know,” he added, taking a swift step into the room and letting the heavy portières drop into place behind him, “he’s been pretty seriously ill. This trip is a—a sort of forlorn hope. He looks a bit better, though, to me, than when I saw him in his palace in Canton.” The little Chinese doctor looked up at the boy eagerly. “You think so, young sir? That is of great encouragement to hear. To me, who am always with him, he seems to change but little. I cannot trust my own vision.” Lis nodded emphatically. “Looks much less tired to me, sir,” he declared. “His face seems a bit fuller, too. Shouldn’t be surprised if he’d gained a few pounds in this long sea trip.” “That’s what I was telling you, Doctor,” Captain Eric corroborated his nephew cheerily. “And we’re not through with our rest cure yet, not by a jugful. Run along with Lis, Ricky, and don’t keep His Excellency waiting.” “I—suppose he speaks English, too?” Erica whispered shyly to Lis, hesitating for a second with her hand on the curtain Lis was about to pull back for her entrance. He nodded. “No trouble about that,” he said, and gave his cousin a little push forward, but gently, for Lis had an almost feminine knack of understanding, and he guessed how tremendous the moment seemed to her. He had felt a good deal the same himself when he was first taken before Sun Li in the Governor’s palace in Canton. Then he saw Erica draw a deep breath and lift her chin in the old familiar fashion. Without a word, Lis drew the curtain aside for her and gave her a little encouraging, approving smile, which Erica failed entirely to see. All her thoughts were concentrated on what she would see on the other side of the heavily embroidered portière. She entered a second room almost as large as the main saloon, and hung with heavy silken curtains like the latter, only in this case the hangings were a warm orange with vividly colored embroidery. Later, Erica learned that the partitions between three of the passenger cabins had been removed, to make one fair-sized apartment. This cabin, too, was lighted by hanging lamps instead of daylight, and in a deep, reclining chair beside a table heaped with books in rich bindings, Erica beheld for the first time her much-discussed Chinese godfather. At the first timid glance she sent him, he seemed to the girl to be all eyes—great, liquid, brilliant black eyes alive with kindness and a keen intelligence, looking out of a thin face with prominent cheek bones, and tautly drawn skin the color of old ivory.