“Very,” she assented heartily. “I think he is delightful, don’t you?”
“He certainly seems to be a most attractive type of young man,” Thomson admitted.
“And how wonderful to have had such adventures!” she continued. “Life has become so strange, though, during the last few months. To think that the only time I ever saw him before was at a polo match, and to-day we sit side by side in a restaurant, and, although he won’t speak of them, one knows that he has had all manner of marvellous adventures. He was one of those who went straight from the playing fields to look for glory, wasn’t he, Hugh? He made a hundred and thirty-two for Middlesex the day before the war was declared.”
“That’s the type of young soldier who’s going to carry us through, if any one can,” Major Thomson agreed cheerfully.
“Hugh,” she exclaimed, pointing to a placard which a newsboy was carrying, “that is the one thing I cannot bear, the one thing which I think if I were a man would turn me into a savage!”
They both paused and read the headlines--
PASSENGER STEAMER TORPEDOED WITHOUT WARNING IN THE IRISH SEA. TWENTY-TWO LIVES LOST.
“That is the sort of thing,” she groaned, “which makes one long to be not a man but a god, to be able to wield thunderbolts and to deal out hell!”
“Good for you, Gerry,” a strong, fresh voice behind them declared. “That’s my job now. Didn’t you hear us shouting after you, Olive and I? Look!”
“You’ve got your ship?” Thomson inquired.
“I’ve got what I wanted,” the young man answered enthusiastically. “I’ve got a destroyer, one of the new type--forty knots an hour, a dear little row of four-inch guns, and, my God! something else, I hope, that’ll teach those murderers a lesson,” he added, shaking his fist towards the placard.
Geraldine laid her hand upon her brother’s arm.
“To-morrow night at Portsmouth,” he replied. “I’m afraid we shall be several days before we are at work. It’s the _Scorpion_ they’re giving me, Gerald--or the mystery ship, as they call it in the navy.”
His rather boyish face, curiously like his sister’s, was suddenly transformed.
“Because we’ve got a rod in pickle for those cursed pirates--”
The young man paused in his sentence. Thomson was looking towards him with a slight frown upon his forehead.