“How in the world I shall find breath enough to tell ’em all about you,” she said distractedly, “goodness only knows.”
“Don’t forget to mention,” said Robert, “that I’m going to be made a chief petty officer next week.”
“And how long did you say it’d be before you left?”
“I shan’t stay long,” he said importantly. “They want chaps in the Royal Navy, and I’m five foot one already.”
“They ’ave made a man of you, Bobbie,” declared the little woman, looking up at him admiringly. “Nobody’d think to look at you now that it was only a few years ago you was nothing more or less than—”
“Just put your ’and on my arm,” interrupted Robert rather hastily. “Above the elbow, I mean. Now then!” He drew his arm up slowly, and the muscles stood out hard and rigid.
“You’re nothing more nor less,” said Miss Threepenny, “than what they call in books a Herkools. And—and you’ve quite made up your mind to be a sailor, Bobbie.”
“Of Her Majesty’s Navy,” said Bobbie proudly. “There’s the signal for you to be off.”
The little woman having found her fishing net, now empty but for the current number of “The Upper Ten Novelette,” went carefully. Her sailor hat was slightly awry, and detecting this by a casual glance at some polished brass, she adjusted it, and pulled her cape straight. The circle of defending boys conducted her to the side of the ship; saw her safely down the slippery gangway ladder to the gig.
“I shan’t kiss you, me dear,” she whispered to Robert, “because they’d only guy you about it afterwards.”