Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/144



ONG before the Delphian reached Shanghai, long before there arrived in Resthaven the slow letter telling of her delay at Honolulu, Mr. Bolliver had formulated in his uneasy mind a plan of action which he contemplated now dubiously, now confidently. He had not been entirely at rest since the boys had sailed from New York that drizzling June day. Times were very different now, after all, he reflected. Boys in their teens were not the men that lads of the last century had been. He began to feel that he had laid upon his own shoulders a burden of responsibility that the passage of weeks did not serve to lighten. But it was Jane, in large measure, who really tipped the scales in favor of his new and somewhat daring plan. For Jane, to the eyes of her anxious friends and 124