“As you mostly do.”
McLagan was thinking rapidly and with sudden deep concern. This girl was all the world to him, and her presence, her proximity filled him with a wild sensation of joy that he was powerless to deny, that he made no attempt to deny. But, of a sudden, he had become horrified as he contemplated the real purpose of his own visit to the derelict. In a moment his mind was made up. By some means he must get her off the ship—before——
There was no smile in his eyes now.
“I kind of wish you hadn’t, Claire. I guess I’ll have to deal with Sasa for disobeying his orders. He was told not to quit that beach for—anything.”
The girl looked up into the man’s face and the flash of hot resentment in her eyes was unmistakable. But she shook her head and refused the impulse his roughness, his downright rudeness had stirred in her. Somehow she always found it easy to make excuse for him.
“The same. Always the same,” she said impatiently, for all the smile she forced herself to. “Some day, Ivor, you’ll wake up and wonder the reason you were built with a rough tongue and a foolish grouch.”
The man glanced quickly at the sky. Then he indicated the main hatch where he had been squatting and led the way towards it. He seated himself and left the girl standing. And promptly seized on the opening she had given him, and sought to drive home his purpose. At all costs he must get her away before——
“There’s times when a rough tongue’s needed. When a grouch is surely dead right,” he said, without any softening. “Is it right for women to give way to a sort of low curiosity to look into the trouble and bad luck helpless folk are up against? You came for that, Claire,” he said deliberately; “it was a swell drive out of Beacon to pass an idle time. I kind of wouldn’t have thought it of you.”
It was one of those moments when the engineer felt that somehow he ought to have done better. He wanted to drive this girl away. And on the spur of the moment it was the only thing he could think of. He wanted to get her off that vessel without explanation. And so he designed to anger her as the simplest, most direct method of achieving his purpose.