“I’m at the same table with them,” interrupted another. “I’m second on her left, and she hasn’t spoken three words to me. And that fellow she is with is like an icicle out of Labrador.”
And Mary Standish was saying: “Do you know, Mr. Holt, I envy those young engineers. I wish I were a man.”
“I wish you were,” agreed Alan amiably.
Whereupon Mary Standish’s pretty mouth lost its softness for an instant. But Alan did not observe this. He was enjoying his cigar and the sweet air.
CHAPTER III
Alan Holt was a man whom other men looked at twice. With women it was different. He was, in no solitary sense of the word, a woman’s man. He admired them in an abstract way, and he was ready to fight for them, or die for them, at any time such a course became necessary. But his sentiment was entirely a matter of common sense. His chivalry was born and bred of the mountains and the open and had nothing in common with the insincere brand which develops in the softer and more luxurious laps of civilization. Years of aloneness had put their mark upon him. Men of the north, reading the lines, understood what they meant. But only now and then could a woman possibly understand. Yet if in any given moment a supreme physical crisis had come, women would have turned instinctively in their helplessness to such a man as Alan Holt.
He possessed a vein of humor which few had been privileged to discover. The mountains had taught him to laugh in silence. With him a chuckle meant as much as a riotous outburst of merriment from another, and he could enjoy greatly without any noticeable muscular disturbance of his face. And not always was his smile a reflection of humorous thought. There were times when it betrayed another kind of thought more forcefully than speech.
Because he understood fairly well and knew what he was, the present situation amused him. He could not but see what an error in judgment Miss Standish had made in selecting him, when compared with the intoxicating thrill she could easily have aroused by choosing one of the young engineers as a companion in her evening adventure. He chuckled. And Mary Standish, hearing the smothered note of amusement, gave to her head that swift little birdlike tilt which he had observed once before, in the presence of Captain Rifle. But she said nothing. As if challenged, she calmly took possession of his arm.
Halfway round the deck, Alan began to sense the fact that there was a decidedly pleasant flavor to the whole thing. The girl’s hand did not merely touch his arm; it was snuggled there confidently, and she was necessarily so close to him that when he looked down, the glossy coils of her hair were within a few inches of his face. His nearness to her, together with the soft pressure of her hand on his arm, was a jolt to his stoicism.
“It’s not half bad,” he expressed himself frankly. “I really believe I am going to enjoy answering your questions, Miss Standish.”