“Then, it looks as if you had inherited some of his qualities. Mr. Robbins declares your help was useful, and perhaps you’ll be glad to know the boiler does all we claim, and the boat is nearly a knot faster than the buyers stipulated. Stick to your job and by and by you may get a better. Our rule is to push on a keen man.”
“There’s another thing, Carson,” said the manager. “I have given the cashier some orders—you can take it for a mark of the company’s appreciation.”
Kit, with something of an effort, replied politely, and went off. His heart beat and the blood came to his skin. He was young and triumph carried a thrill.
CHAPTER III
NETHERHALL
Bleak moors, seamed by dark gullies, enclose Netherdale, and a river, leaping from the peat, breaks on whinstone ledges and plunges into alder-shaded pools. Where the valley widens, larch woods roll up the slopes and Netherhall and its oaks occupy a flat round which the water curves. The house is old and dignified, and belonged to Mrs. Alan Carson. The Carsons were ironmasters, but when Alan married he sold his foundry. For some time the business had not prospered, and Alan was glad to let it go. He was cautious and hesitating, and when he faced obstacles he went another way. As a rule, since his marriage, the way was Mrs. Carson’s way.
Four or five hours after Kit left the shipyard, he sat in the grass at Netherhall by Evelyn Haigh’s basket chair. He smoked a cigarette and sometimes he talked, but for the most part he was content to look about and study Evelyn. The picture was attractive. For a background, old oaks, tufted by shaggy moss, rolled down to the stream. The leaves were touched by the coppery gleams that mark the oak when summer is young, and blue shadows lurked among the trunks.
Evelyn’s clothes were white, but her shady hat and her belt were yellow. Her hair was black; her face was small, rather thin and finely molded. She was lightly built and her pose was graceful, but her mouth was firm and sometimes her look was calculating. Kit, however, did not notice things like that.
He rested his back against a tree and let himself go slack. The afternoon was hot, and but for the splash of the river, all was quiet.
“You look tired, Kit,” Evelyn remarked.
“I expect I’m lazy. All the same, at the office we were pretty strenuously occupied, and I was keen about the boiler. Now the boat has run her trial, I feel I’m entitled to relax, and when one wants to loaf I don’t know a better spot than Netherhall.”