“Your fault or hers?”
“Why, we have just drifted along. Somehow I didn’t like to tie her down until I could make good—and she—well, I believe she felt the same way; but of course I can’t say. She knows perfectly well that I have never looked at another girl since I saw her at Wellington when she and my sister graduated there. She has—well,—browsed a little, but I don’t think she ever meant anything by it. We get along like a house afire,—like the same things,—think the same way,—we have never talked out yet.”
“Well, if you’ll excuse me, I think you were an ass not to settle the matter long before this.”
“Do you think so? Do you think it would have been fair? Why, man, I owed some money to my mother for my education in Paris and did not even have a job in sight!”
“Pshaw! What difference does that make? Don’t you reckon girls have as much spunk about such things as men have? If I ever see the girl I want bad enough to go all the way to Paris to get her, I’ll tell her so and have an answer if I haven’t a coat to my back.”
“Perhaps you are right. I just didn’t want to be selfish.”
“Selfish! Why, they like us selfish.”
Kent laughed at the wisdom of the young Hercules. No doubt they (whoever “they” might be) did like Castleman selfish or any other way. He looked like a young god as he sprawled on deck, his great muscular white arm thrown over his head to keep the warm rays of the sun out of his eyes. His features were large and well cut, his hair yellow and curly in spite of the vigorous efforts he made to brush it straight. His eyes were blue and childlike with long dark lashes, the kind of eyes girls always resent having been portioned out to men. There was no great mentality expressed in his countenance but absolute honesty and good nature. One felt he was to be trusted.
“Doesn’t it seem strange to be loafing around here on this deck with no thought of war and of the turmoil we shall soon be in?” said Jim one evening at sunset when they were nearing their port. “We have only a day, or two days at most, before we will be in Paris, and still it is so quiet and peaceful out here that I can hardly believe there is any other life.”
“Me, too! I feel as though I had been born and bred on this boat. All the other things that have happened to me are like a dream and this life here on the good old Hirondelle de Mer is the only real thing. I wonder if all the passengers feel this way.”