“I like Gerty,” said Henry with the air of a connoisseur, as he looked at the small flushed face. “I think Gerty’s very pretty.”
“That’s what they always call me,” said Miss Harcourt carelessly. “Does your ship go right out to sea?”
“Yes,” said the boy. They had been blown out to sea once, and he salved his conscience with that.
“And how many times,” said Gertrude Ursula Florence Harcourt, getting nearer to him again, “have you had fights with pirates?”
She left absolutely no loophole. If she had asked him whether he had ever fought pirates he would have said “No,” though that would have been hard with her little excitable face turned towards his and the dark blue eyes dancing with interest.
“I forget whether it was six or seven,” said Henry Atkins. “I think it was only six.”
“Tell us all about them,” said Miss Harcourt, shifting with excitement.
Henry took a bite of his apple and started, thankful that a taste for reading of a thrilling description had furnished him with material. He fought ships in a way which even admirals had never thought of, and certainly not the pirates, who were invariably discomfited by the ingenious means by which he enabled virtue to triumph over sin. Miss Harcourt held her breath with pleasurable terror, and tightened or relaxed the grip of her small and not too clean fingers on his arm as the narrative proceeded.
“But you never killed a man yourself,” said she, when he had finished. There was an inflection, just a slight inflection, of voice, which Henry thought undeserved after the trouble he had taken.
“I can’t exactly say,” he replied shortly. “You see in the heat”—he got it right that time—“in the heat of an engagement you can’t be sure.”