II

II

Sally stared at his vermilion profile in frank amazement. Ginger, she had realized by this time, was in many ways a surprising young man, but she had not expected him to be as surprising as this.

“Marry you!”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, yes, I suppose I do. You allude to the holy state. Yes, I know what you mean.”

“Then how about it?”

Sally began to regain her composure. Her sense of humour was tickled. She looked at Ginger gravely. He did not meet her eye, but continued to drink in the uniformed official, who was by now so carried away by the romance of it all that he had begun to hum a love-ballad under his breath. The official could not hear what they were saying, and would not have been able to understand it even if he could have heard; but he was an expert in the language of the eyes.

“But isn’t this⁠—don’t think I am trying to make difficulties⁠—isn’t this a little sudden?”

“It’s got to be sudden,” said Ginger Kemp, complainingly. “I thought you were going to be here for weeks.”

“But, my infant, my babe, has it occurred to you that we are practically strangers?” She patted his hand tolerantly, causing the uniformed official to heave a tender sigh. “I see what has happened,” she said. “You’re mistaking me for some other girl, some girl you know really well, and were properly introduced to. Take a good look at me, and you’ll see.”

“If I take a good look at you,” said Ginger, feverishly, “I’m dashed if I’ll answer for the consequences.”

“And this is the man I was going to lecture on ‘Enterprise.’ ”

“You’re the most wonderful girl I’ve ever met, dash it!” said Ginger, his gaze still riveted on the official by the door “I dare say it is sudden. I can’t help that. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, and there you are!”

“But⁠ ⁠…”

“Now, look here, I know I’m not much of a chap and all that, but⁠ ⁠… well, I’ve just won the deuce of a lot of money in there⁠ ⁠…”

“Would you buy me with your gold?”

“I mean to say, we should have enough to start on, and⁠ ⁠… of course I’ve made an infernal hash of everything I’ve tried up till now, but there must be something I can do, and you can jolly well bet I’d have a goodish stab at it. I mean to say, with you to buck me up and so forth, don’t you know. Well, I mean⁠ ⁠…”

“Has it struck you that I may already be engaged to someone else?”

“Oh, golly! Are you?”

For the first time he turned and faced her, and there was a look in his eyes which touched Sally and drove all sense of the ludicrous out of her. Absurd as it was, this man was really serious.

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am,” she said soberly.

Ginger Kemp bit his lip and for a moment was silent.

“Oh, well, that’s torn it!” he said at last.

Sally was aware of an emotion too complex to analyse. There was pity in it, but amusement too. The emotion, though she did not recognize it, was maternal. Mothers, listening to their children pleading with engaging absurdity for something wholly out of their power to bestow, feel that same wavering between tears and laughter. Sally wanted to pick Ginger up and kiss him. The one thing she could not do was to look on him, sorry as she was for him, as a reasonable, grown-up man.

“You don’t really mean it, you know.”

“Don’t I!” said Ginger, hollowly. “Oh, don’t I!”

“You can’t! There isn’t such a thing in real life as love at first sight. Love’s a thing that comes when you know a person well and⁠ ⁠…” She paused. It had just occurred to her that she was hardly the girl to lecture in this strain. Her love for Gerald Foster had been sufficiently sudden, even instantaneous. What did she know of Gerald except that she loved him? They had become engaged within two weeks of their first meeting. She found this recollection damping to her eloquence, and ended by saying tamely, “It’s ridiculous.”

Ginger had simmered down to a mood of melancholy resignation.

“I couldn’t have expected you to care for me, I suppose, anyway,” he said, sombrely. “I’m not much of a chap.”

It was just the diversion from the theme under discussion which Sally had been longing to find. She welcomed the chance of continuing the conversation on a less intimate and sentimental note.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, seizing the opportunity offered by this display of humility. “I’ve been looking for you all day to go on with what I was starting to say in the lift last night when we were interrupted. Do you mind if I talk to you like an aunt⁠—or a sister, suppose we say? Really, the best plan would be for you to adopt me as an honorary sister. What do you think?”

Ginger did not appear noticeably elated at the suggested relationship.

“Because I really do take a tremendous interest in you.”

Ginger brightened. “That’s awfully good of you.”

“I’m going to speak words of wisdom. Ginger, why don’t you brace up?”

“Brace up?”

“Yes, stiffen your backbone and stick out your chin, and square your elbows, and really amount to something. Why do you simply flop about and do nothing and leave everything to what you call ‘the family’? Why do you have to be helped all the time? Why don’t you help yourself? Why do you have to have jobs found for you? Why don’t you rush out and get one? Why do you have to worry about what, ‘the family’ thinks of you? Why don’t you make yourself independent of them? I know you had hard luck, suddenly finding yourself without money and all that, but, good heavens, everybody else in the world who has ever done anything has been broke at one time or another. It’s part of the fun. You’ll never get anywhere by letting yourself be picked up by the family like⁠ ⁠… like a floppy Newfoundland puppy and dumped down in any old place that happens to suit them. A job’s a thing you’ve got to choose for yourself and get for yourself. Think what you can do⁠—there must be something⁠—and then go at it with a snort and grab it and hold it down and teach it to take a joke. You’ve managed to collect some money. It will give you time to look round. And, when you’ve had a look round, do something! Try to realize you’re alive, and try to imagine the family isn’t!”

Sally stopped and drew a deep breath. Ginger Kemp did not reply for a moment. He seemed greatly impressed.

“When you talk quick,” he said at length, in a serious meditative voice, “your nose sort of goes all squiggly. Ripping, it looks!”

Sally uttered an indignant cry.

“Do you mean to say you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying,” she demanded.

“Oh, rather! Oh, by Jove, yes.”

“Well, what did I say?”

“You⁠ ⁠… er⁠ ⁠… And your eyes sort of shine, too.”

“Never mind my eyes. What did I say?”

“You told me,” said Ginger, on reflection, “to get a job.”

“Well, yes. I put it much better than that, but that’s what it amounted to, I suppose. All right, then. I’m glad you⁠ ⁠…”

Ginger was eyeing her with mournful devotion. “I say,” he interrupted, “I wish you’d let me write to you. Letters, I mean, and all that. I have an idea it would kind of buck me up.”

“You won’t have time for writing letters.”

“I’ll have time to write them to you. You haven’t an address or anything of that sort in America, have you, by any chance? I mean, so that I’d know where to write to.”

“I can give you an address which will always find me.” She told him the number and street of Mrs. Meecher’s boardinghouse, and he wrote them down reverently on his shirt-cuff. “Yes, on second thoughts, do write,” she said. “Of course, I shall want to know how you’ve got on. I⁠ ⁠… oh, my goodness! That clock’s not right?”

“Just about. What time does your train go?”

“Go! It’s gone! Or, at least, it goes in about two seconds.” She made a rush for the swing-door, to the confusion of the uniformed official who had not been expecting this sudden activity. “Goodbye, Ginger. Write to me, and remember what I said.”

Ginger, alert after his unexpected fashion when it became a question of physical action, had followed her through the swing-door, and they emerged together and started running down the square.

“Stick it!” said Ginger, encouragingly. He was running easily and well, as becomes a man who, in his day, had been a snip for his international at scrum-half.

Sally saved her breath. The train was beginning to move slowly out of the station as they sprinted abreast on to the platform. Ginger dived for the nearest door, wrenched it open, gathered Sally neatly in his arms, and flung her in. She landed squarely on the toes of a man who occupied the corner seat, and, bounding off again, made for the window. Ginger, faithful to the last, was trotting beside the train as it gathered speed.

“Ginger! My poor porter! Tip him. I forgot.”

“Right ho!”

“And don’t forget what I’ve been saying.”

“Right ho!”

“Look after yourself and ‘Death to the Family!’ ”

“Right ho!”

The train passed smoothly out of the station. Sally cast one last look back at her red-haired friend, who had now halted and was waving a handkerchief. Then she turned to apologize to the other occupant of the carriage.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, breathlessly. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

She found herself facing Ginger’s cousin, the dark man of yesterday’s episode on the beach, Bruce Carmyle.