“I’m sorry to hear that, for if I can rise to the price of a gee, I was hoping you would allow me to join you occasionally.”

“I should be delighted, but——­” and she hesitated.

“Oh, yes,” he added quickly, “I know what you are going to say:  ’How about a chaperon?’”

“Perhaps they don’t keep chaperons in Rangoon?”

“Oh, yes, my dear, they do,” declared Mrs. Maitland, who, as she joined them, had overheard the last remark, “and extra fierce specimens, I can assure you!  Miss Leigh, they want me to sing Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria,’ so will you be an angel and come and play my accompaniment?”

As Miss Leigh was always ready to be “an angel” at a moment’s notice, she offered no resistance when Mrs. Maitland took her by the arm and led her away to the music-room.

Shafto and Miss Leigh were usually among the first to appear on deck, both being early risers; she, in order to leave a clear field for Mrs. Milward’s prolonged toilet, and the elaborate operations of her clever maid.  The pretty grey hair had to be taken out of pins, brushed, back-combed and deftly arranged, as the frame to its owner’s beaming and youthful face.  Lacing, buttoning and hooking also absorbed considerable time.

As for Shafto, he was no lie-a-bed.  Even in those dark, raw winter days at Lincoln Square, when breakfast was served by electric light, he was always punctual, and one of the first to descend and retrieve his boots through the smoky atmosphere of the lower regions.  What a contrast were those murky hours to these glorious mornings in the tropics—­the green translucent sea, the soft golden light, the salt, stimulating air, all shimmering and melting together!  The day really dawned for Shafto when a certain Panama hat, crowning a beautiful head, emerged from the companion ladder, and the smile in a pair of bright dark eyes greeted him like a ray of sunshine.  One morning, as the couple paced the deck before breakfast, accompanied by Mr. Hoskins, an excited fellow traveller accosted the trio.

“I say,” he began, “have you heard?  They have just signalled land ahead!”

“Oh, where?” cried Sophy eagerly.

“Do you see over the starboard bow, that faint dark streak upon the sky line?”

She nodded.

“Well then,” he announced impressively, “that is Burma!”

Shafto snatched up a pair of glasses and gazed at the long line of coast and, as he gazed, he felt as if he stood upon Pisgah and a whole new world lay open before him.  He was figuratively surveying the Promised Land!

CHAPTER XI

A BURMESE HOSTESS

Early in the same afternoon the Blankshire picked up her pilot at Elephant Point and entered the famous Irrawaddy.  Long before her destination was in sight, twenty miles from the sea, the glorious Shwe Dagon, a shining golden object, towered into view, flashing in the sunlight against a background of impenetrable woods.