The veranda was shady, and Kit sat on the top step in the cool breeze that blew between the posts. Olivia occupied a basket-chair farther back; her pose was languidly graceful and sometimes she smiled. It was not for nothing she had put on clothes she liked the best of all she had, but she thought she knew why Kit for the most part looked at the town and not at her. Sometimes his puritanical conscience bothered him. Mrs. Austin's rule was to receive all her friends who liked to come after six o'clock, but Kit had arrived two hours sooner, because Olivia had hinted that he might. She knew Jacinta would not be about, and now thought Kit imagined he ought to go.
The landscape he contemplated had some charm. The sun was behind the mountains, and the dark rocks were a good background for the white town and the cathedral towers. The white was not dead; the shadow had touched it with elusive grey and blue, and the rows of houses glimmered, somehow like pearls. In front the sea was a wonderful ultramarine.
In the meantime, Olivia studied Kit's figure and his face in profile. She thought his profile good, there was something ascetic about its cleanness of line. He was thin, but his white clothes rather emphasised the firm modelling of his neck and shoulders and the curve to his waist. All the same, Olivia thought his quietness tiresome.
"The view from the veranda is rather fine," she said.
Kit looked up with an apologetic smile. "You imply I'm dull? Perhaps I am dull. You see, I was pretty strenuously occupied not long since."
"Catching fish for the captain's señora?"
"We did catch some fish, but we shipped some camels through the surf, and ran into bad weather coming home. To keep the animals alive was an awkward job. The sea came on board, the fodder washed about, and the scuppers were choked. The ship got a list, and two or three feet of water splashed in the angle between her deck and side. Camels can't stand getting wet, you know."
"I don't know," Olivia rejoined. "Besides, I don't see how the bad weather accounts for your absorption in the view."
"Oh, well! After a job like ours you want a rest, and there's something about Grand Canary that makes you satisfied to loaf. The Island of the Golden Apples, the old explorers talked about! Then I think the nicest spot in Grand Canary is Mrs. Austin's veranda. Anyhow, if I had talked, you might have got bored. You are bored sometimes."
Olivia laughed. "You are modest, but if you know when I am bored you are cleverer than I thought. However, when you first arrived you would have been hurt."