Almost the very words herself had been about to use!
“Why so had I to me!” she cried.
They both laughed. “Tell on,” said Harry.
“No, you. Yours first.”
“Toss you,” cried Harry; and spun a coin and lost and went ahead: “Well, mine doesn’t exactly shake the foundations of the world with excitement because I refused it. It was to go out to defend in a big murder case in Singapore!”
She exclaimed, “In Singapore!”
“Yes, Singapore. Why do you say it like that?”
She did not answer.
The prisoner, Harry went on, was a wealthy trader, immensely wealthy, and immensely detested, it appeared, by the European settlement; had native blood in his veins; was charged with poisoning an Englishman with whose wife he was supposed to have been carrying on an amour. “A wretched, unsavoury business,” said Harry, and went on to say that, though the fee offered was extraordinarily handsome, he had declined the proposal. It was doubtful he would actually make more money over it than in his normal round at home, more than that it went against the grain to be defending a man of native origins who had pretty obviously seduced a white woman if not murdered her husband. “No, no ticket to Singapore for me, thanks,” said Harry.
Rosalie turned to him with a sudden, direct interest. “Harry, suppose you had accepted, how long would you have been away?”