“To keep it from laughing at me first.  And to make it laugh with me—­if I can.”

“Do you think you can?”

“I shall try hard—­against the biggest odds.  And whatever it does to me, I shan’t cry.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if that wasn’t the whole secret of life!” said Peter Rolls, continuing to look at the face.

Suddenly it flashed a smile at him.  “Shouldn’t you?  Give me the Balm of Gilead, and the rest would be easy!”

Peter was not stupid as a rule, yet he could not be quite sure what she meant.  If he guessed right, the rest wasn’t as easy as she thought.  Yet the words made him wish that he could give the girl who laughed—­the girl who was not to be a “permanence” with Nadine—­more than a teaspoonful of balm.

CHAPTER III

AN ILL WIND

While the storm held, Peter Rolls went several times each dreadful day to the room of the mirrors and dosed his dryads with Balm of Gilead.  The medicine—­or something else—­sustained them marvellously.  And it occurred to Peter that they would make a magnificent advertisement, if there were any way of using them—­the kind of advertisement his father loved.

It was well that Peter senior was not on board, or he would certainly propose a new feature for the balm department:  scene, richly furnished salon on a yacht; five fair effects in ball dresses sipping Balm of Gilead; the whole arrangement on a rocking platform, with mechanism hidden by realistically painted waves.  But the dryads were previously engaged by the prostrate Nadine—­all except one.

When they were sufficiently restored to take an interest, Peter smuggled grapefruit, chocolates, and novels into the nursery.  The novels his sister had brought with her to kill time during the voyage; but as it happened, she was killing it with Lord Raygan instead and never missed the books.

Nadine had been obliged to take first-class tickets for her models; otherwise the rules of the ship would not have allowed them past the barrier, even in the pursuit of business.  But they sardined in one cabin, near the bow, on the deepest down deck allotted to first-classhood, and their private lives were scarcely more enjoyable than the professional.  They were, to be sure, theoretically able to take exercise at certain hours, weather permitting; but weather did not permit, and four of the dryads, when free, sought distraction in lying down rather than walking.  It was only the fifth who would not take the weather’s “no” for an answer.

She had a mackintosh, and with her head looking very small and neat, wound in a brown veil the colour of her hair, she joined the brigade of the strong men and women who defied the winds by night.  From eight to ten she staggered and slid up and down the wet length of the least-frequented deck, or flopped and gasped joyously for a few minutes in an unclaimed chair.