We had all the apartments vacant, but of course it’s never business to say that. I took him upstairs, the lady following, and showed him the best sitting-room and the best bedroom, and he said to his wife, “I think these will do, dear, don’t you?” and she said, “Oh, yes! they are very nice indeed,” and then she went to the window and looked out into the garden, and said, “Oh, what a pretty garden!”—and then he went and looked out too, and she slipped her arm through his, and they stood there together, and I saw him give her a little squeeze with his arm, and it made me think of my own honeymoon, when Harry used to squeeze my arm just like that.
When I went downstairs the young gentleman followed me to settle with the fly, and I told him not to bother about the things—everything should be sent upstairs directly. He was very shy and awkward, I thought—shyer and awkwarder than Harry had been; but then, of course, he wasn’t a sailor, and sailors have a knack of accommodating themselves to circumstances at once.
When I went up to take their orders for dinner, I knocked at the door, and I heard them move before the young gentleman said, “Come in.”
I’m sure they were sitting side by side on the sofa, and when I went in he was standing up by the fireplace, and the young lady was looking out of the window, with her face close to the glass, just as if they hadn’t been within a mile of each other!
“What time will you have dinner, please?” I said; “and what would you like?”
He turned to her and asked her what I had asked him.
“Six o’clock, I think, dear,” she said.
“And what shall we have?”
I saw that they didn’t quite know what to say, so I suggested what we could get easiest, and they said, “Oh, yes; that will do capitally,” and seemed quite pleased that I had helped them.