Captain Welfare seemed keen on my going. Edmund kept himself curiously aloof from the conversation.
I had the idea that he wanted to dispose of the business side of the matter first. I was determined to become, if possible, a part owner of the Astarte, and all the enterprise associated with her. But it was impossible to discuss actual business until the three of us were alone.
The bishop was innocently emphatic on the subject of my voyage.
He insisted that I wanted a “change,” and that the longer I stopped away the better for his starveling protégé, who was to occupy my house, and preach sermons in my absence.
So the subject was bandied about until we came down to details, and I began to realise that I was really going to sail with them.
A fortnight’s yachting is no great enterprise; but I had somehow a kind of reluctance. I think this was determined by Edmund’s aloofness. He had been, I thought, a little “queer” all the evening, and I had a feeling that he did not want me to start.
But Captain Welfare was pressing in his invitation, and the bishop, in his kindness for me, backed him up.
So before we parted, the rather hazy project had become a definite plan, and I had promised to send the bishop due notice of the date when I should be ready for my locum tenens.
“Remember,” he said as he bade good-bye the next morning, “if you’re away six months it will be all the better for poor Snape. Much as I shall miss you personally, I give you indefinite leave.”
During the next fortnight Captain Welfare and Edmund were much away on business. The furnishing of the shop was completed, and the stock brought down from London.