They went forward along the narrow side. Conversation was not easy, they
had to make their way round various obstacles by sense of feeling; still
Eve talked; she talked hastily, irrelevantly. When she came to the end
of her breath she found herself speaking this sentence: "I like your
friend Mr. Hollis so much!"
"Yes, Kit is a wonderful fellow; he has extraordinary talent." He spoke
in perfect good faith.
"Oh, extraordinary?" said Eve, abandoning Hollis with feminine
versatility, as an obscure feeling, which she did not herself recognize,
rose within her.
"If you don't think so, it's because you don't know him. He is an
excellent classical scholar, to begin with; he has read everything under
the sun; he is an inventor, a geologist, and one of the best lawyers in
the state, in spite of his notion about not practising."
"You don't add that he is an excellent auctioneer?"
"No; that he is not, I am sorry to say; he is a very bad one."
"Yet it is the occupation which he has himself selected. Does that show
such remarkable talent? Now you, with your mining--" She stopped.
"I didn't select mining," answered Paul, roughly, "and I'm not
particularly good at it; I took what I could get, that's all."
They had now reached the forward deck. Two men belonging to the crew
were sitting on a pile of rope; above, patrolling the small upper
platform, was the officer in charge; they could not see him, but they
could hear his step. To get to the bow, they walked as it were up hill;
they reached the sharp point, and looked down over the high, smooth
sides which were cutting the deep water so quietly. Eve's glance turned
to the splendid aurora quivering and shining above.
"This _T. P. Mayhew_ is an excellent boat," remarked Paul, who was still
looking over the sides. "But, as to that, all the N. T. boats are good."
"N. T.?"
"Northern Transportation." He gave a slight yawn.
"Tell me about your iron," said Eve, quickly. ("Oh, he will go in! he is
going in!" was her thought.)
"It isn't mine--I wish it was; I'm only manager."
"I don't mean the mine here; I mean your Clay County iron."
"What do you know about that?" said Paul, surprised.
"Mr. Hollis told me; he said you had declined an excellent offer, and he
was greatly concerned about it; he told me the reasons why he did not
agree with you."
"It must have been interesting! But that all happened some time ago;
didn't you know that he had come round to my view of it, after all?"
"No."
"Yes, round he came; it took him eight days. He has got such a
look-on-all-sides head that, when he starts out to investigate, he
tramps all over the sky; if he intends to go north, he goes east, west,
and south first, so as to make sure that these are not the right
directions. However, on the eighth day in he came, squeezing himself
through a crack, as usual, and explained to me at length the reasons why
it was better, on the whole, to decline that offer. He had thought the
matter out to its remotest contingencies--some of them went over into
the next century! It was remarkably clear and well argued; and of course
very satisfactory to me."
"But in the meantime you had already declined, hadn't you?"
"Yes. But it was a splendid piece of following up. I declare, I always
feel my inferiority when I am with people who can really talk--talk like
that!"
"Oh!" said Eve, in accents of remonstrance. Her tone was so eloquent
that Paul laughed. He laughed to himself, but she heard it, or rather
she felt it; she drew her hand quickly from his arm.
"Don't be vexed. I was only laughing to see how--"
"How what?"
"How invariably you women flatter."
"_I_ don't." She spoke hurriedly, confusedly.
"You had better learn, then," Paul went on, still laughing; "I'm afraid
that when we're well stuffed with it we're more good-natured. Shall I
take you back to the stern? I'm getting frightfully sleepy; aren't you?"
On the way back she did not speak.
When they reached the stern-deck, "Good-night," he said, promptly
opening the door into the lighted saloon.
She looked up at him; in her face there was an inattention to the
present, an inattention to what he was saying. Her eyes scanned his
features with a sort of slow wonder. But it was a wonder at herself.
"You had better see that the windows are closed," said Paul. "There's
going to be a change of wind."