“Then you’re not satisfied about the circulation?” Blake inquired, and Kit thought his interest rather keen.
“We are nearly satisfied. Colvin’s hurrying me, and when Mabel has had enough I must go back to the office: the tube-shop foreman wants some particulars. Anyhow, we mustn’t bore Mabel. I like your window, madam. It commands a moving view.”
“The fires and grime of industry?” said Mabel and laughed. “I begin to doubt if I know you, Mr. Carson. Sometimes you’re the minstrel you talk about, and sometimes a shipbuilder. Which would you really like to be?”
“I don’t know. There’s the trouble. Anyhow, I do like your window. It commands the road to countries not yet modernized—where men beat the monkey-skin drums and play the pipes, make love by primitive rules and kill their rivals. For example——”
A whistle shrieked on a high note and dropped to a harmonious chord; a ruby beam moved across the trembling reflections. Then a funnel and a vague, long hull stole through the shipyard smoke. The beam faded, the hull was foreshortened and the ship went round a bend. The wave she threw off beat the bank and melted in the dark.
“The Negapatam, bound for Singapore and the Malay seas,” said Kit. “But I expect you get cold.”
Blake shut the window and pulled chairs to the small gas fire; and Kit thought his doing so characteristic. Tom was a very good sort, but he was sober and, so to speak, rather soft.
“Why must you go back to the office on my birthday?” Mrs. Blake inquired.
“Well, you see, I get my pay for building ships, and the Mariposa will soon be waiting for her fast-steaming, anti-incrustation boiler. Our boiler; the very latest thing of the water-tube type!”
“What is a water-tube boiler? And why are you so keen about the Mariposa’s?”