Rankine had got a few days' leave and was spending it at Appleyard. He sat beside Elsie in a corner of the billiard-room, where the party had gathered after dinner. He had arrived during the afternoon, and Andrew was not altogether pleased to see him, although he liked the man. Elsie had suggested that Dick should invite him, and had added that he might as well come when Madge Whitney was there. Since Elsie had not seen Rankine until he arrived, Andrew wondered what she meant; but he admitted that she generally had a reason for what she did.
Nobody had been playing billiards or wanted to begin. Elsie and Mrs. Woodhouse were knitting and the others were talking quietly, while they waited for the evening newspaper.
Presently Staffer made a remark about the Navy, and Madge Whitney looked at Rankine with a smile.
"Don't you feel that you must answer that?"
"I don't know that I can," Rankine answered good-naturedly. "To some extent, Mr. Staffer's right. The Navy certainly occupies the background of the stage, just now."
"It strikes me as being out of sight altogether," Staffer said.
"Well, perhaps that's its proper place. But I expect it will emerge from obscurity when it's wanted."
"We must hope so," Staffer returned. "No doubt, your commanders are waiting for the right moment to make a dramatic entry on the scene; but one imagines that ambitious young officers must find being kept in the background rather galling."
Andrew caught Whitney's glance and understood it as a warning not to speak. It had been blowing hard for the past week and he thought of the great battleships rolling until it was scarcely possible to keep a footing on their stripped decks, while anxious men slept beside the guns and bitter seas foamed across the ponderous, low-sided hulls. It would be worse on the swift destroyers, driving, half submerged, through the gale and trembling when the combers struck them, until their thin steel skin and beams racked and bent with the strain. No man could really keep a lookout in the blinding clouds of spray, and their decks would be swept from end to end with icy water. Rankine knew this, but he smiled tranquilly as he turned to Staffer.
"Oh, I don't think they mind--so long as they feel they're useful!"