She tore this up too, flew into a temper with herself, and then wrote as follows:
“George,—I’ve heard everything. Dick is furious, but he’s not going to do anything, so just stay at Osaka till I come, and don’t go bolting off anywhere else. And don’t drink too much port, for if you get another attack of gout I won’t nurse you.—Jane.
“P.S.—You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
She sealed this classical epistle and addressed it. Then she remembered that she might just as well have left it unwritten, for there was no communication to be had with Osaka till the morrow; and if she posted it, it would go by the same boat as herself. So she tore it up.
Then she sat down on the side of her bed and bit a corner of her handkerchief.
She was thinking.
To-morrow she would never see Dick again, most probably, after that.
She had never loved Dick, that is to say in the good old Family Herald way. Their boy and girl relationship had been anything but sentimental.
Recalling the past she could conjure up no tender pictures.
She could see herself clinging to a rod bent like a bow, and shouting to Dick: “Now then, chucklehead, gaff him!”