Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/88

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
70
THE FORTUNE OF THE INDIES

forefoot. And how Mark Ingram stood on the quarter-deck with his arms folded, and now and again a low word to the helmsman; and how, once he had dipped the pennant, he never looked back to Resthaven, but out and out to China; and, on the other hand, how young Bart stared and stared ever and again back over the bubbling wake to the gray shore-line.

So Jane Ingram hung spellbound on the quick, low words of this little old gentleman, and now and then sighed prodigiously.

"Oh, it's all true!" she cried at last. "It's true, and it was you who did it. Oh, I never thought I'd ever see any one who'd really done it."

"And," said Mr. Bolliver, "I've not been in Resthaven since that morning, nor set foot on this wharf since I left it for the deck of the Gloria."

So Mr. Bolliver took his departure—this time in a modern taxicab—and the Ingrams sorrowed and besought him to come often. And Jane so mourned his loss that she quite forgot his appropriation of the model and the fact that the Historical Society's exhibition of maritime relics closed that day without her having taken a last look at the Fortune of the Indies.