"Undoubtedly one rather wonders who did," he murmured to himself with a faint smile. "But I think—I think, it was a good idea."
"It was a sort of infatuation, Hugh. I can’t explain it." With her arm through his—she hadn’t quite found her sea-legs yet—they were walking slowly up and down the promenade deck of the liner.
"Doesn’t need any explanation, darling," he answered. "It’s happened before: it will happen again. There are quite a number of Mr. James Stauntons at large—more’s the pity."
"I know," she said. "I know that. But somehow he seemed different."
"HE always does." For a while they continued their walk in silence. "Quite cured, little girl?"
"Quite, absolutely." She squeezed his arm, "I think I was well on the way to being cured, before—before he cheated. And that finished it."
"Ah!" Hugh stopped a moment to light a cigarette.
"It simply defeats me how, after all he said, he could have done such a thing."
"I wouldn’t let it worry you, sweetheart. The matter is of little importance. Halloa! What do these people want?"
"Glad to see you about again, Mrs. Massingham." An officer in the Indian Army, returning from leave, and his wife came up. "Would you and your husband care to make up a four at bridge?"
"Would you, dear?" She turned to him, and Massingham smiled.
"You go, Delia. You’ll be able to find a fourth, and you’ve walked enough. I never play cards, myself."
"What a refreshing individual," laughed the officer’s wife. "Does it bore you?"
"Intensely," murmured Hugh. "And I’m such a bad player."
He watched his wife go away with them: then, leaning over the rail, he commenced to fill his pipe. Away to starboard, like a faint smudge on the horizon, lay the north coast of Africa: two days in front was Malta. And then—— Surreptitiously he put a hand into his breast pocket and pulled out a photograph. Yes: it had been a good idea.
The personally conducted tour round Frenton’s Steel Works paused, as usual, on reaching the show piece of the entertainment. The mighty hammer, operated with such consummate ease by the movement of a single lever, though smaller than its more celebrated brother at Woolwich Arsenal, never failed to get a round of applause from the fascinated onlookers. There was something almost frightening about the deadly precision with which it worked, and the uncanny accuracy of the man who controlled it. This time it would crash downwards delivering a blow which shook the ground: next time it would repeat the performance, only to stop just as the spectators were bracing themselves for the shock—stop with such mathematical exactitude that the glass of a watch beneath it would be cracked but the works would not be damaged.