"I wonder how many times to the minute a woman changes her mind!" he jested, but he was secretly much amazed.
"She's hard up!" was his thought. That side of the picture had not presented itself to his mind before, and it "gave him to think." He later resolved that he would offer to buy the lace from her to give to his sister—and then get her to take it back under the name of a "keepsake" when they reached England.
"I bet that'll suit her book," he cynically thought.
But Poppy did not come on deck after dinner, and the next day she let Newnham see very plainly that she was offended. For two more days she kept the atmosphere about her so frigid that he did not dare venture into it. He found the time singularly blank. There was nothing to do but sit in the smoke-room and curse the day that he was born, between drinks. On the third evening she relented and allowed him to approach her under the blaze of electric-light.
"Why have you been so cruel to me?" he demanded almost violently. "What have I done to make you angry?"
He half expected that she would—as girls generally do—first feign ignorance of his meaning, and, later, allow herself to be persuaded that she had never been angry at all. But she was not of the same kidney as the girls Maurice Newnham had been meeting for the last ten years. She spoke at once, and to the point.
"I thought it extremely insolent of you to offer to give me five pounds," she said, and Newnham, being much taken aback, could only find tongue to utter:
"I swear I didn't mean to be insolent."
"Oh, yes, you did. I hated the way you spoke; and when I remember the way you looked, I wonder that I allow myself to speak to you again."
"I'm awfully sorry," he stammered. "I'd no idea you would take it in such a way. It was an ordinary thing to do, I thought. Most women or girls in Africa would think nothing of taking a little bit of lace."