“I’m not going to love him,” she said again to herself.
And that again was significant.
Over in front of the men’s hut Aleck Gault and Steve sat on the rail, after the others had gone to bed.
“You ought to pay the drinks after all, Steve,” said Gault. “She snubbed you all right, but she made a most handsome apology for it.”
“She did so,” said Steve, emphatically. “It took some grit to do that in front of the crowd, Aleck. I’m getting to like that girl. She’s something out of the ordinary.”
Aleck Gault smoked on in silence. “Any objections?” said Steve.
“You’re such an ass about girls, Stevie,” said Gault, cheerfully. “I suppose you’re going to fall in love as usual.”
“I never fell in love in my life—but once,” said Steve. “And that was lesson enough not to again. If I thought I was going to do that now, I’d clear out to-morrow.”
“You may not fall in love with them,” said Gault, “but they do with you—some of them, anyway. And somehow I wouldn’t like this girl to feel that way for any man that didn’t love her.”
“We’re gushing about love like a pair of sentimental old tabbies, or a page out of a woman’s novelette,” said Steve, contemptuously. “Love be blowed. The girls like a lark as well as I do, and that’s all.”