I had a lot of trouble six months ago to stick up in the middle of a mudflat for a tide mark. Did you ever hear of anything more provoking—eh?”
“I wouldn’t quarrel with the beggar,” I observed casually, yet disliking that piece of news strongly. “It isn’t worth while.”
“I quarrel?” cried Jasper. “I don’t want to quarrel, I don’t want to hurt a single hair of his ugly head. My dear fellow, when I think of Freya’s twenty-first birthday, all the world’s my friend, Heemskirk included. It’s a nasty, spiteful amusement, all the same.”
We parted rather hurriedly on the quay, each of us having his own pressing business to attend to. I would have been very much cut up had I known that this hurried grasp of the hand with “So long, old boy. Good luck to you!” was the last of our partings.
On his return to the Straits I was away, and he was gone again before I got back. He was trying to achieve three trips before Freya’s twenty-first birthday. At Nelson’s Cove I missed him again by only a couple of days. Freya and I talked of “that lunatic” and “perfect idiot” with great delight and infinite appreciation. She was very radiant, with a more pronounced gaiety, notwithstanding that she had just parted from Jasper. But this was to be their last separation.
“Do get aboard as soon as you can, Miss Freya,” I entreated.
She looked me straight in the face, her colour a little heightened and with a sort of solemn ardour—if there was a little catch in her voice.
