"Of course I'm very happy now. None happier!"
"But apart from the girl?"
"You can't get apart from her; that's just it. If I'm to go on being happy in my position, I'll have to learn to fill it without making myself a laughing-stock; and the one person who can teach me will be my wife."
"I see. Then you begin to like your position for its own sake?"
"That's so," replied Jack. He was paring a cake of very black tobacco for the pipe which he had stuck between his teeth. Dalrymple watched him with interest.
"And yet," said the squatter, "you have neither acquired a taste for your own most excellent cigars, nor conquered your addiction to the vile twist we used to keep on the station!"
"Well, and that's so, too," laughed Jack. "You must give a fellow time, Mr. Dalrymple!"
"Do you know what I thought when I met you yesterday?" continued Dalrymple, turning his back to the moon, and looking very hard at Jack while he sucked at his cigar with his thick, strong lips. "Do you know how you struck me then? I thought you'd neither acquired a taste for your new life nor conquered your affection for the old. That's how you struck me in Devenholme yesterday."
Jack made no haste to reply. He was not at all astonished at the impression he had created the day before. But his old boss was still the one man before whom he was anxious to display a modicum of dignity, even at the expense of a pose. And it is noteworthy that he had neither confided in Dalrymple concerning his dilemma of the previous day, nor yet so much as mentioned in his hearing the model hut among the pines.
"I don't wonder," he said at length; "it was the way I was likely to strike you just then. Don't you see? I hadn't got it out at the time!"