His name upon the ship's books was Edward Braithwaite Colchester, but between Tilbury and Sydney Harbour he was better known as Cupid. His mother was a widow with four more olive branches, absolutely dependent on her own and Teddy's exertions.
At the best of times Kindergartens for the children of respectable tradespeople are not particularly remunerative, and the semi-detached villa in Sydenham was often sorely tried for petty cash. But when Teddy was appointed fourth officer of the X.Y.Z. Company's steamship Cambrian Prince, endless possibilities were opened up.
If you will remember that everything in this world is ordained to a certain end, you will see that Teddy's future entirely depended on his falling in love—first love, of course, and not the matter-of-fact business-like affair that follows later.
After his second voyage he obtained a fortnight's leave and hastened home. Being fond of tennis and such-like amusements, he was naturally brought into contact with many charming girls, who, because he was a strange man and a sailor, were effusively polite. Then he fell hopelessly in love with a horribly impossible girl, and in the excitement of the latest waltz proposed, and was accepted, on the strength of a fourth officer's pay, an incipient moustache, and a dozen or so brass buttons.
During the next voyage his behaviour towards unmarried women was marked by that circumspection which should always characterize an engaged man. He never allowed himself to forget this for an instant, and his cabin had for its chief ornament a plush-framed likeness of a young lady gazing, with a wistful expression, over a palpably photographic sea.
Now, it was necessary for his ultimate happiness that Teddy Colchester should learn that, like his own brass buttons, without constant burnishing, a young lady's affection is apt to lose much of its pristine brightness, and that too much sea air is good for neither. He ticked off the days of absence, and, as his calendar lessened, his affection increased.
At Plymouth a letter met him—a jerky, inky, schoolgirl epistle, evidently written by a writer very cold and miserable; and the first reading stunned him. Had he seen a little more of the real world, he would have been able to read between the lines something to this effect: "You're Teddy, three months away, and I'm madly in love with a soldier." Then he would have noted that the writer was staying in Salisbury, after which he would have hunted up his home papers and discovered that the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry Cavalry were encamped at Humington Down. But as he had only seen life through a telescope, he could not do this, consequently his pain was a trifle acute.
His mother wrote him four pages of sympathy. But though she wondered at any girl jilting her boy, she could not help a feeling of satisfaction at its being still in her power to transmute three-quarters of his pay into food and raiment for her brood.
Next voyage the Cambrian Prince had her full complement of passengers, and the "Kangaroo Girl," whom perhaps you may remember, was of the number. At Plymouth a little reserved girl joined, and as she is considerably mixed up in this story, you must know that she rejoiced in the unpretentious name of Hinks.
For the first week or so Teddy held very much aloof from the passengers, engaging himself entirely with recollections of the girl for whose sake he was going to live "only in a memory."