"Was she going to marry you?" Mrs. Austin asked.
"No," said Kit, blushing like a girl. "When I got my post I wanted her to promise she would marry me when I came back, but she refused."
"This was just before you sailed?" Mrs. Austin remarked thoughtfully.
"Of course. Until Don Arturo sent for me, I knew it might be long before I could support a wife. Betty knew, but she went about with me. Sometimes we went to small concerts and sometimes, on Saturday afternoons, across the river. On the Cheshire side you can get away from the streets. There's a wood one can reach from a station, and primroses and hyacinths grow in the dead leaves. Betty was happy among the flowers; she loves things like that. She used to watch the thin birch sprays swing across the white trunks. I didn't know they were birches until she told me, but I sometimes thought her eyes were like the hyacinths. However, I've talked a lot and I'm boring you."
"We are not bored," said Mrs. Jefferson, and Mrs. Austin mused.
Kit's voice was very gentle; it looked as if he had not known passion, and Mrs. Austin thought Betty had qualities. One could picture a girl whose life was dreary using all her charm to get a lover; but Betty obviously had not. She had refused Kit, although nothing he had said indicated that she was calculating and ambitious. Well, one sometimes met a girl whose thought was not for herself.
"After all, a sobrecargo's pay on board the correillo is not large," she said.
"That is so," Kit agreed. "But one has so much besides; the sea, the sunshine, friends I could not have got at Liverpool. One feels confident; there are better jobs, and perhaps one is not forced to be poor always. Anyhow, Betty didn't bother about the pay; she can go without things, but when I tried to persuade her she was firm. Well, I think it's done with, she won't marry me. All the same, if I could bring her out to rest and get strong in the sun——"
He stopped, with some embarrassment, and resumed: "I have bored you and must get the captain to sign the manifests."
He went off and Mrs. Austin looked at Mrs. Jefferson.