Then Peter took her to see Emma Campbell and the cat.

Emma would have crawled into her berth and stayed there until the ship docked if it hadn’t been for the cat.  Satan had to be given a daily airing; he had to be looked after by some one she could trust, and Emma rose to the occasion.  She crawled out of her berth and on deck, where, steamer rug over her knees, her head tightly bound in a spotless white head-handkerchief, she sat with her hand on the big bird-cage set upon a camp-stool next her chair.

“I don’ say one Gawd’s word about me, dough I does feel lak I done swallahed my own stummick.  All I scared of is dat dis po’ unforch’nate cat ’s gwine to lose ‘is min’ befo’ we-all lan’s,” she told Mrs. Hemingway, and cast a glance of deep distaste at the tumbling world of waters around her.  Emma didn’t like the sea at all.  There was much too much of it.

“I got a feelin’ heart for ole man Noah,” she concluded pensively.

When they sighted the Irish coast, Emma discovered a deep sense of gratitude to the Irish:  no matter what they didn’t have, they did have land; and land and plenty of it, land that you could walk on, was what Emma craved most in this world.  When they presently reached England, she was so glad to feel solid earth under her feet once more that she was jubilant.

“Cat, we-all is saved!” she told Satan.  “You en me is chillun o’ Israel come thoo de Red Sea.  We-all got a mighty good Gawd, cat!”

They went up to London with Mrs. Hemingway, and were met by Hemingway himself, who gave Peter Champneys an entirely new conception of the term “business man.”  Peter knew rice- and cotton- and stock-men, even a provincial banker or two—­all successful men, within their limits.  But this big, quiet, vital man hadn’t any limits, except those of the globe itself.  A tall, fair man with a large head, decided features, chilly gray eyes, and an uncompromising mouth adorned with a short, stiff mustache, his square chin was cleft by an incomprehensible dimple.  His wife declared she had married him because of that cleft; it gave her an object in life to find out what it meant.

Hemingway studied Peter curiously.  He had a great respect for his wife’s nice and discriminating judgment, and it was plain that this long-legged, unpretentious young man was deeply in her good graces.  Evidently, then, this chap must be more than a bit unusual.  Going to be an artist, was he?  Well, thank God, he didn’t look as if he were afflicted with the artistic temperament; he looked as if he were capable of hard work, and plenty of it.

People liked to say that John Hemingway was a fine example of the American become a cosmopolitan.  As a matter of fact, Hemingway wasn’t.  He liked Europe, but in his heart he wearied of its over-sophistication, its bland diplomacy.  His young countryman’s unspoiled truthfulness delighted him.  He was proud of it.  A man trained to judge men, he perceived this cub’s potential strength.  That he should so instantly like his wife’s protege raised that charming lady’s fine judgment even higher in his estimation.  A man always respects his wife’s judgment more when it tallies with his own convictions.