"Not in the back of her head, which was all I saw of her."
Once more I expressed myself stupidly. "Did you—did you think it was—my wife—or just a friend?"
She burst out laughing. "How could I tell? You speak as if you didn’t know. You’re certainly the queerest kid—"
I tried to recover my lost ground. "I do know, but—"
"I didn’t watch you," she denied, indignantly. "The idea! You sure have your nerve with you. I couldn’t help seeing a guy that was right under my eyes, could I? Besides which—"
She brought the words out with an air of chaffing embarrassment. "Well, you weren’t got up as you are now. Do you know it?"
As I reddened and stammered something about the war, she laid her hand on my arm soothingly.
"There now! There now! That’s all right. I never give any one away. You can see for yourself that I can’t have knocked about the world like I’ve done without running up against this sort of thing a good many times—"
"Oh, well, if you don’t know I needn’t tell you. But I’m your friend, kid. That’s all I want you to know. It’s why I told you about myself. I wanted you to see that we’re all in the same boat. Harry Drinkwater’s your friend, too. He likes you. You stick by us and we’ll stick by you and see the thing through."
It was on my lips to say, "What thing?" but she rattled on again.
"Only you can’t wear that sort of clothes and get away with it, kid. Do you know it? Another fellow might, but you simply can’t. It shows you up at the first glance. The night you came on board you might just as well have marched in carrying a blue silk banner. For Heaven’s sake, if you’ve got anything else in your kit go and put it on."
"Haven’t? What on earth have you done with all the swell things you must have had? Burned ’em?"
The question was so direct, and the good-will behind it so evident, that I felt I must give an answer. "Sold them."
"Got down to that, did you? What do you know? Poor little kid! Funny, isn’t it? A woman can carry that sort of thing off nine times out often; but a fat-head of a man—"
She kept the sentence suspended while gazing over my shoulder. The lips remained parted as in uttering the last word. I was about to turn to see what so entranced her, when she said, in a tone of awe or joy, I was not sure which: