Perhaps it was strange, but he had not stipulated that he must be employed for a fixed time. He ought to have stipulated. Then he was surprised because Don Ramon knew his object for wanting to go. Don Ramon was clever and his remarks hardly indicated much confidence in Wolf.
"You are generous," Kit resumed. "However, I doubt if I can honestly work for you and Wolf. You see, the office now and then buys corn at the Moorish ports."
"I think I see," Don Ramon replied with a twinkle. "You imply that so long as you take Wolf's pay you are his man, and we must not expect you to study his business for our benefit? Well, we do not expect this, and you will find Wolf's business is, for the most part, transacted at a neighbourhood we leave alone. All the same, the chartered steamer is valuable, and although we have asked for some guarantees, we would like a company's servant on board. Don Erminio and Macallister will join the ship."
Kit's hesitation vanished. His luck was strangely good, and he thanked Don Ramon, who presently sent him off. While his double engagement lasted he would be rich, and when he returned to the correillo he wrote to his mother, asking her to make some plan for helping Betty. For example, Betty might take a holiday and, if Mrs. Musgrave used proper tact, need not know Kit had borne the cost. He wanted Betty to get a holiday that would brace her up. Yet it was obvious he was not in love.
His reflections were disturbed. A fowl, cackling in wild alarm, came down the ventilator shaft that pierced the ceiling of his small room. It struck the rack above the folding washstand, and Kit's hairbrush and a box of brass buttons fell. The buttons rolled about the floor and under his berth. Then the fowl swept his desk with fluttering wings and the inkpot overturned. Kit frowned and put his letter in the envelope. His friends on board liked a rude joke, and a fowl had come down the shaft before. Kit had thought he had spoiled the joke by painting the inside of the bowl-head on deck, but the paint did not long keep wet. He tried to catch the fowl, with the object of putting it in Macallister's bed, and finding he could not, opened the door, and drove it out. Soon afterward Macallister came in and indicated the stained desk.
"She's no' rolling, but it looks as if ye couldna' keep your inkpot right-side-up," he said. "Weel, I've kenned Garcia's sherry account for stranger things than yon."
"I've known it account for your losing your boots," Kit rejoined.
Macallister grinned. "The night was balmy. I was tired and my feet were sair. Ye'll mind I scalded them, saving the ship when the boiler tubes burst——"
"I was not on board," said Kit. "Anyhow, Don Erminio states Felix, your stoker, stopped the tubes. But you certainly lost your boots."
"How was I to ken the Spaniards would rob me while I slumbered? And I have my doubts. Mills o' the Estremedura was tacking along the mole, and they're no' a' gentlemen aboard yon boat. But we'll let it go. Ye dinna ken what auld Peter has done for ye?"