“No, I am afraid not. We have our discipline too, you know. Besides, we are rather like railway guards. We must keep up to time. We shall be under way by two o’clock.”
Fitz pressed the point no further. He had been brought up to discipline since childhood--moreover, he was rather clever in a simple way, and he had found out that it would be no pleasure but a pain to Luke to board a ship flying the white ensign.
“Can I stay on board to lunch with you?” he asked easily. “Goodness only knows when we shall run against each other again. It was the merest chance. We only got in last night. I was just going ashore to report when we saw the old Croonah come pounding in. That”--he paused and drew his cloak closer - “is why I am in my war-paint! We are going straight home.”
“Stay by all means,” said Luke.
Fitz nodded.
“I suppose,” he added as an afterthought, “that I ought to pay my respects to Mrs. Ingham-Baker?”
Luke’s face cleared suddenly. Fitz had evidently forgotten about Agatha.
“I will ask them to lunch with us in my cabin,” he said.
And presently they left the bridge.
In due course Fitz was presented to the Ingham-Bakers, and Agatha was very gracious. Fitz looked at her a good deal. Simply because she made him. She directed all her conversation and eke her bright eyes in his direction. He listened, and when necessary he laughed a jolly resounding laugh. How could she tell that he was drawing comparisons all the while? It is the simple-minded men who puzzle women most. Whenever Luke’s face clouded she swept away the gathering gloom with some small familiar attention - some reference to him in her conversation with Fitz which somehow brought him nearer and set Fitz further off.