Three Men and a Maid
Page 55"Oh, is that you?"
"Yes."
"You've been a long time."
"It wasn't an easy job," explained Sam, "getting all that burnt cork off. You've no notion how the stuff sticks. You have to use butter...."
She shuddered.
"Don't!"
"But I did. You have to with burnt cork."
"Don't tell me these horrible things." Her voice rose almost hysterically. "I never want to hear the words burnt cork mentioned again as long as I live."
"I feel exactly the same." Sam moved to her side.
"I didn't."
"You didn't?"
"No, I didn't."
"Oh, you didn't! I thought you did!" He looked at her wistfully.
"I thought," he said, "that possibly you might have wished to comfort me. I have been through a great strain. I have had a shock...."
"And what about me?" she demanded passionately. "Haven't I had a shock?"
He melted at once.
"Have you had a shock, too? Poor little thing! Sit down and tell me all about it."
"Can't you understand what a shock I have had? I thought you were the perfect knight."
"Yes, isn't it?"
"Isn't what?"
"I thought you said it was a perfect night."
"I said I thought you were a perfect knight."
"Oh, ah!"
A sailor crossed the deck, a dim figure in the shadows, went over to a sort of raised summerhouse with a brass thingummy in it, fooled about for a moment, and went away again. Sailors earn their money easily.
"Yes?" said Sam when he had gone.
"Something about my being the perfect knight."
"Yes. I thought you were."
"That's good."
"But you're not!"
"No?"
"No!"
"Oh!"
Silence fell. Sam was feeling hurt and bewildered. He could not understand her mood. He had come up expecting to be soothed and comforted and she was like a petulant iceberg. Cynically, he recalled some lines of poetry which he had had to write out a hundred times on one occasion at school as a punishment for having introduced a white mouse into chapel.