"I am not so sure of that. I wish now that I had kept the thirty thousand which we had to pay back, and had let you remain where you were."
"On board Strange's odd-job steamer? It wasn't so bad, though I was chained by the leg. I learnt a lot about engines there; used to watch 'em when she was bumping through hurricanes. They were triple expansion, too. It was fun to watch the old Scotch engineer with his hand on the throttle-valve, and hear him curse when the screw leaped sky-high to race like a motor. I've had worse times--much worse."
He spoke with more animation than usual, and Leah sympathised with his enthusiasm. She also would have enjoyed herself on a rotten hulk with doubtful engines and an hourly chance of going down into the great green seas; the excitement would have been intense, and the death a clean one. Perhaps Jim had forgotten the softer emotions of man when the tramp stormed north with every rivet in her hull straining for dispersion. She wondered. "I suppose you missed Señorita Fajardo then?"
"No; curiously enough, I didn't. There was too much fun in thinkin' what would come next to bother about her. I'm a bit of a philosopher, Leah, an' when I can't get cake I chew bread. Now I've got the cake I'm enjoyin' it."
"And eating too much of it. Look how stout yon are getting."
"Respectable men always get stout when they grow old."
"You are not old."
"I'm a bit elderly. Somehow I don't enjoy larks so much as I used to," mused Jim, thoughtfully--"sign of age, I suppose. But I daresay I'll get some sort of fun out of life, an' maybe will need old Jarvey Peel's money at sixty. It'll be more than thirty thousand by then."
"Less the six thousand you paid Strange," said his Duchess, cruelly.
Jim winced. "Bit of a pull, that--hey! Nice fancy price I've had to pay for your fun, Leah."