"Am I walking around with a sign on my back?" testily.
"Of a kind, yes."
Cathewe spoke so solemnly that Fitzgerald looked round, and saw that which set his ears burning. Immediately he lowered his gaze and sought the water again.
"Have I been making an ass of myself, Arthur?"
"No, Jack; but you are laying yourself open to some wonder. For three or four days now, except for the forty-eight hours on land there, you've been a sort of killjoy. Even the admiral has remarked it."
"Tell him it's my liver," with a laugh not wholly free of embarrassment. "Suppose," he continued, in a low voice; "suppose—" But he couldn't go on.
"Yes, suppose," said Cathewe, taking up the broken thread; "suppose there was a person who had a heap of money, or will have some day; and suppose there's another person who has but little and may have less in days to come. Is that the supposition, Jack? The presumption of an old friend, a right that ought never to be abrogated." Cathewe laid a hand on his young friend's shoulder; there was a silent speech of knowledge and brotherhood in it such as Fitzgerald could not mistake.
"That's the supposition," he admitted generously.
"Well, money counts only when you buy horses and yachts and houses, it never really matters in anything else."
"It is easy to say that."