“You are not to do anything of the kind—it’s too hot for you. Stay at the club. Oh, Ally——”
“Well?”
“Is there anything going on in the Legislature?”
“Not that I know of more than the usual—ahem!—grind. What’s up?”
“Nothing. I only thought—oh, nothing. Give my love to Di.”
“All right. Take care of yourself, dear.” Ally rang off hastily, and turned to drink cého with relief. He was not a hypocrite, and he had reached a point when he did not want Chum to send her love to Mrs. Churton.
After all, he did not ride out to their bungalow, for he talked horse with Captain Nugent to the accompaniment of many whiskies, and then it seemed too late, remembering that he had to dress—he had had his clothes sent down to the club—and get his pony and ride up to Maitso. But Brissy was not pressed for time, and offered himself as a substitute, whereby it came to pass that he turned up to have tea with Chum, and impressed her anew in her secret heart with his absolute inferiority to Ally, and the wearying vacuum of his brains.
“He is like a bad copy of Ally, too,” she thought critically, looking at the burnt face and the young eyes drawn round with spurious wrinkles by foreign service. Under the black moustache Brissy’s teeth flashed as he talked, for he had a trick of drawing back his upper lip, and above his low forehead the dark hair thatched an unusually flat head. Owing to vivid colouring, he was considered a handsome man among his fellows; but Mrs. Lewin did not admire him.
“His eyes have no soul in them—he is just a healthy animal!” she said to herself disparagingly, as he stolidly drank his fourth cup of tea and showed no signs of going. “Oh, thank Heaven, Ally is not like this! What shall I talk about?”
It seemed ridiculous to think of Brissy as a father, and Mrs. Lewin never drew him on to domestic subjects as she might other married men, partly because it struck her as inappropriate to him, and partly because there was a general belief in Key Island that he would have liked to bring his wife out with him, but that Mrs. Nugent had not been attracted by a small and dull Station such as Port Victoria, and had preferred to wait until he had something better. Brissy staunchly asserted that her health would not stand the heat, but Captain Gilderoy had shrugged his shoulders to a select audience, and given it as his opinion that at the last moment Mrs. Nugent had jibbed! The theory met with credence, and therefore Chum talked banjos and ponies rather than married interests, and had no suspicion that Brissy’s unemotional eyes strayed round the home, for which he envied “old Ally Sloper,” with a secret wistfulness. He was adding her presence at her husband’s side to the long list of advantages with which he had already endowed her, while she privately decided that a lifelong tête-à-tête with Bristow Nugent would exhaust the vitality of any woman, and that Mrs. Nugent’s absence needed no explanation to a sympathetic mind.