“So do I,” agreed Peter.
“I’m leaving—train to-night,” Sheila hurried on. “No use putting it off; better sail as soon as the passport’s ready. There’s just one thing more I want to say before I leave you.”
Then Peter chuckled for the first time that day. “You can say it, of course, but if you think you’re going to leave me behind, you’re mistaken. I wired the chief the day you told me. They need another correspondent over there. When it comes to passports there is some advantage in not being a husband, after all. Well—are you glad?”
When Hennessy came upon them, a few minutes later, they looked so supremely happy and oblivious of the rest of the world that he was forced to stop. “Sure, ye might be the bride an’ groom, afther all, by the looks of ye. What’s come over ye all of a sudden?” And when Peter told him, and they both put their hands in Hennessy’s in final parting, he shirred his lips and whistled forth evidence of a satisfied emotion to which he added a word of warning to Peter:
“I’m not envyin’ ye, just the same, Mr. Brooks. Afore ye get her home again ye’ll find the Irish say right, ‘A woman’s more throuble to look afther than a thorn in the foot or a goat fetched back from the fair!’”
Chapter VI
MONSIEUR SATAN
There had been nothing, perhaps, more radically changed by the rigors of war than Atlantic transportation. The thrills of pleasure and romance that attended the tourist in the days before the war had deepened to thrills of another timbre, while romance had become more epic than idyllic. The happy phrase of “going abroad” had given place to “going over” or “going across”; such a trifling difference in words, but the accompaniment comes in quite another key. It was no longer shouted in a care-free, happy-go-lucky fashion; it may have had a ring of suppressed exultation; but it was sure to be whispered with a quick intake of breath, and so often it came through teeth that were clenched.