"Lord ——, five whiskies and sodas, making eight since two o'clock this afternoon."
"Oh, Roland! How naughty of you! Whatever put it into your head to spy on people like this?"
The laugh that was on his lips was now dancing in his big brown eyes.
"It doesn't do them any harm, and it's very funny," he said. "I can hear a good deal of what they say. I don't want to listen, you know, but I can't help hearing. Still, it doesn't matter, because I would not tell anybody for anything in the world.... Just fancy, Big Yeogh Wough, we're going to be in Kiel to-morrow! I shall see father in a tobacconist's shop again."
"Is there anything so very wonderful in that?"
"Of course there is. He's a different man directly he gets into a tobacconist's. You really wouldn't know he was father. It's so funny to watch him."
"Oh! Men are always like that, dear. You'll be like it yourself when you're a grown man. No matter how much a man loves a woman he gets free from her somehow inside a tobacco shop. But I hope you want to see Kiel for better reasons than that."
He nodded as he patted my hand.
"I know. It's the Kaiser's jewel of a port, where he hugs up the beginnings of his navy."