“Why do you pity him? He is going to join his ship, the Sparrow Hawk, next week, and that ought to content him.”
“Ships do not always fill a man’s heart.”
“Then they ought. I don’t like it,” she added, in a petulant tone. “I have so much to learn and to do, I don’t want to be tormented about a tiresome man.”
“Well, he will be out of your way to-morrow.”
“Geraldine, that is a horrid tone.”
“If you choose to put meaning in it, I cannot help it.”
“And that horrid little Maura! She is in the most awful flutter, standing on tiptoe, and craning out her foolish little neck. I know it is all after Ivinghoe, and he never has come to our counter! Kalliope has been trying to keep her in order, but I’m sure the Queen of the White Ants must have been just like that when she got poor Captain White to marry her. Kalliope is so much vexed, I can see. She never meant to have her here. And Aunt Ada stayed away on purpose.”
“Has she seen much of him?”
“Hardly anything; but he did admire her, and she never was like Kalliope. But what would Aunt Ada do? Oh dear! there’s that man! He has no business at Aunt Jane’s charity stall. I shall go and tell him so.”
Geraldine had her little private laugh before Adrian came up to her with a great ship in his arms—