"I'm glad the moon has come, Miss Dearsley. If there is no chance of her clouding over, I shall ask the skipper to slip us into the thick of the fleet, and I'll take the boat."
"You are very good to take the risk after that dreadful time."
"I'm afraid I only follow a professional instinct. One thing is certain, I shall stay out here for the winter and do what I can."
Girls are tied by conventions; they cannot even express admiration in fitting language; they may giggle or cackle so that every ripple of laughter and every turn of a phrase sounds nauseously insincere. Marion Dearsley durst not talk frankly with this fine fellow, but she said enough.
"I'm not sure that you will not be better here than spending time in society—that is, if you have no pressing ambition, as most men have. I mean ambition for personal success and praise, and position. My brother always spoke of Parliament, and I suppose you would aim at the Royal Society. Girls have little scope, but I should imagine you must suffer."
"Maisie, you're the dearest old preacher in the world. Why don't you persuade Mr. Ferrier to be a great man on shore instead of coming out here to be bruised, and drowned, and sent home, and all that kind of thing?"
Then Miss Lena thoughtfully added, as in soliloquy—
"But he might come to be like old Professor Blabbs who makes a noise with his soup, or Sir James Brennan with the ounce of snuff round his studs. No. Perhaps Maisie's right." "I have plenty of ambition—I am burning with it, and I have an intuition that this is one of the widest and finest fields in the world —for impersonal ambition, that is, ambition above money, and so forth."
Then Ferrier, with a touch of pride quite unusual in him, said—
"I'm not persuaded that I've done so badly in the ambitious way up to now. This should be a fair change."