But our doctors didn’t keep us waiting long. About eight o’clock half a dozen of them, important little men with much gold lace, came smiling up the gangway. We worried, rather, about the plague we had braved⁠—and we did hope none of our crew would develop symptoms⁠—but, having faith in the Japanese Vice-Consul in Honolulu, we hoped for special leniency. We were not disappointed. They examined the ship’s company with great care, but our examination was a mere formality, a sort of apologetic enumeration as a matter of fact, and after giving us a clean bill of health the doctors bowed themselves most courteously away. But we had a narrow escape. Charlie’s nurse developed a suspicious sore throat the very next afternoon and gave us many days of anxiety for the baby and the other children. And, as I shall make plain further on, our anxiety was not without cause.

In reading over my own and my husband’s letters, written on that trip to various members of the family, I find that Charlie was very much in evidence at all times. I suppose he was spoiled because, certainly, everybody took a hand in his misguidance, but the spoiling process at least kept him in high good humour, unless it happened to take the form of secret indulgence in prohibited sweets; then I had to meet the consequences. I find my husband writing to his brother Charles: “Charlie continues to be as full of spirits and as determined to have his own way as ever. We call him ‘the tornado’; he creates such a sensation when he lands in the midst of the children on board the ship. He is very badly in need of discipline and I long for the time to come when he will be better able to appreciate it. Maria has become quite as much a slave to him as Nellie and you may tell his Aunt Annie that I am still the only hope the boy has of moral training.” This sounds so much like the average father that I thought I ought to quote it.