Conversation flagged until Mrs. Folyat asked Gertrude and Mary to get the supper, and then Serge insisted on helping and asked if he might cook an omelette. Mrs. Folyat bade him stay with her.
He sat opposite her and she fixed her spectacles and looked long at him. Then she said:
“You’re like your father, but there’s a look in you too of my mother. What are you going to do?”
“Do? I don’t know. I’ve spent all my life trying things and leaving them before they left me.”
“It was a terrible blow to us, your leaving the Navy like that.”
“Was it? It’s so long ago now, but I was rather surprised at it myself. I was sick of the water and pretending to defend England’s shores when nobody seemed to want to attack them.”
“But you were only a boy.”
“I sometimes think I shall never be anything else. I can’t stand the things men do. They waste such a lot of time over them.”
“But you must work.”